In New York City, you don\u2019t need to have a computer science degree to be a \u201cdata person,\u201d according to Zachary Feder, the open data program manager at the Mayor\u2019s Office of Data Analytics. You just need to be conscious of your community.<\/p>\n
Feder, along with representatives from 19 other city agencies and community organizations, helped organize hackathons, surveys and other presentations in New York City communities for the city\u2019s fourth annual NYC Open Data Week earlier this month. Previous editions of the conference have helped spark an artistic culture around the city\u2019s nearly 3,000 open data sets, but Feder told StateScoop that this year, increasing civic engagement with open data \u2014 an element of New York City\u2019s 10-year Open Data Plan published last September \u2014 was the main goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, how do we take the people who don\u2019t think of themselves as data people and communicate that, A, they\u2019re using data all the time, and B, how that information can be important for their daily lives?\u201d Feder said.<\/p>\n
In addition to events hosted by NYC 311, Cyber Command and other city agencies focused on digital services, Feder said the city also helped organize events that were hoped to bring out community members to experience data-collection and analysis firsthand.<\/p>\n
One of these was a hackathon built around understanding pay parity as it relates to gender, held by a women-owned data analysis company called LYLAS, which stands for “Love Ya Like a Sis.” Another, more whimsical event invited New Yorkers to be \u201csquirrel sighters\u201d for a day, collecting data and building a profile of New York City squirrel breeds and populations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a few events where maybe people don\u2019t think of themselves as data people, but they have real questions and real problems to solve,\u201d Feder said.<\/p>\n
While the city employs open data coordinators to serve as in-house data stewards for city agencies, publishing data is only the starting point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of internal use by the city, and there\u2019s a lot of work that we can do to foster more use by the public and by different communities,\u201d he said. \u201cThe principle of our open data program is open data for all, and these events are another example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Open data has a wonky reputation, but officials in New York are doing their part to attract regular folk to a growing movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":31238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[4676],"tags":[310,798],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[4698],"class_list":["post-31237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city","tag-new-york-city","tag-open-data-week","author-ryan-johnston"],"yoast_head":"\n