Constituent-Data-Collaborative
Imagining an evolution of data.gov that revolves around a Data Collaborative approach to link open data generated at the local level to better empower constituents to lobby their electeds.
Context
This started as a simple question on how sitting members of the US Congress can positively influence local municipal operations. The discussion evolved into many distinct and insightful threads that centered around how data can be better used for policy-making.
The discussion threads can be viewied @ https://treeverse.app/view/9zVXfCZf
What
The Congressional Data Collaborative could be an indepdendent entity similar to the Congressional Budget Office that is tasked with ensuring that each Congressional District works with local agencies to collect, organize, aggregate, analyze, and make available key data to usher in a new age of evidence-based policy making.
Why
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Empower constituents with evidence and facts about their locales and how they fare compared to the rest of the nation to lobby their electeds. Think of it as beyond just calling your representative on the phone with a prepared transcript but lobbying to your representative using evidence.
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Keep members of Cong. engaged with and informed of local issues using GroundTruthed data across issues while also serving local needs.
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Ensure evidence-based policy-making vs rhetoric or partisan-based approaches.
How
- Open an issue to imagine further!
Updates
March 23, 2019: Script to extract percentage variable data and visualize on a Tableau dashboard has been completed. I reached out to the Census Developer Team as I was getting a ton of non-percentage values for variables that were called "Percent Estimates". I pruned the variable list for all values >100. I also found a list of legislators from https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislatorsand was able to merge this data with the Census values to create a dashboard where a user can tweet specific stats at their elected representative.