Metadata Standards and Data Usability at the City of Seattle
As I discussed in my last blog post, I’m working this summer to examine the use of of civic metadata standards with a goal of providing recommendations for the City of Seattle. My hope is that these recommendations will help the City improve the quality of the information available on the open data portal, data.seattle.gov.
The City of Seattle has published a lot of great datasets. Covering topics from emergency 9–1–1 responses, to food for the homeless, to arts organizations, these datasets shed light on issues that affect the lives of residents each and every day. But not all of the datasets are easy to use. Some have unclear titles, confusing acronyms, or are out of date. It’s not always obvious where the data comes from, how old it is, or what it shows.
These problems are not unique to Seattle; other cities struggle with similar challenges. To help Seattle, I looked to peer cities’ open data programs for guidance. How do they standardize metadata attributes so they’re presenting information in a clear, consistent manner? What standards have they chosen to use? What feedback do they receive from people who are using the data? In looking at the work of peer cities with regard to metadata, San Francisco has put in a lot of effort. A few years ago, they kicked off a a project to develop their own metadata standard. After doing research and collecting feedback from users, they successfully adopted a custom standard and began to implement it for all datasets across the city. On the policy side, New York City provides a strong example. Their open data law requires every dataset to include a plain language data dictionary. And Los Angeles has also made some headway into the practical how-tos for opening up data, including guidance on metadata standards.
One of the biggest insights I’ve gleaned from learning about the work of other cities is that usability is essential. As I mentioned in my last blog post, residents start with questions like “How much is my house worth?” and then look for data to give them answers. Metadata is important because it provides the context we need in order to determine if a particular dataset can help us. Datasets alone are not valuable; the value comes from data’s ability to answer our questions. Open data helps us measure the health and vibrancy of the communities in which we live, and being able to develop these insights is a common goal that many of us share.
Through my research, I’ve learned that metadata standards are inherently connected to usability. Attention to usability helps everyone who may encounter a dataset, including residents, businesses, data nerds, and city staff. Data isn’t helpful unless we can put it to work, and metadata standards facilitate this. As the amount of data in our environment grows — driven largely by internet of things (IoT) devices — the role of government employees to act as data stewards will only become more important. The City of Seattle should always be thinking about how people use data, even when focusing on the technical standardization aspect of metadata. Luckily, Seattle has a great Open Data Team that’s committed to getting input from members of the community, including people who participate in Open Seattle and in other civic tech hackathons. I’m excited to be contributing to the Open Data Program and am eager to learn more about the City of Seattle’s plans for the future.
