Cross-Department Workflow

[junosuarez]

As it now stands, section 5 says

Section 5. Each city department will identify and publish three priority datasets maintained within the department to the open data website by (six months from date of resolution).

In the interest of creating sustainable civic technology, the open data policy should look beyond a short-term but one-time goal for releasing data sets and instead try to institutionalize a means of releasing - and maintaining - open data as a standard part of doing business.

In the short term, every department should work with IT to inventory and identify which datasets they have available and which are easy to obtain and export from existing line of business information systems. All of these datasets should be indexed and listed on the Open Data Portal even prior to their actual release. This way, city staff can work with IT, implementers of the Open Data Portal, and members of the civic tech community to prioritize the work of obtaining and publishing the data.

Beyond that, each department should designate a point person or a liaison to be aware of and facilitate the proactive release and publishing of open data sets as well as reactive customer service to requests for data from other departments within city government and from the public. These liaisons should be accountable for their department's timely release of data sets on a continuous basis and should also be empowered with necessary training, peer support, and communications resources, and sponsorship to act as open data champions within their departments.

[aplannersguide]

Agreed. I think section 4 addresses some of your suggestions relating to the inventory and publishing of the data. @rebeccawilliams had a similar idea that this could early on in the process in issue #11. We will definitely need to add some language that says as much.

Relating to the departmental liaison we will need to discuss this in more detail. I like the idea. I think there may be concerns about staffing but it should be noted that some level of staff involvement will be necessary to make the policy a success.

[brijsingh922]

I believe there should not be a staffing problems if the current staffs work more effectively and have deep interest in making work efficient. Where there is will there is a way! Government employees have to change their attitude towards future.

[dbmesser]

There will be some issues with staffing regarding the IT Department at first. There are not yet equipped to be able to fully comply with the policy as written. There are no DBA's, no true business analysts, Data specialists, etc. This is something I'm currently working on as we restructure. There are usually business analysts that act as the liaison to specific departments. One part of their role is to work on analyzing and changing business processes to be more efficient, but also to work as act as data analysts in conjunction with DBAs and other data specialists to create data marts/warehouses which they use to do business intelligence work. This data is pushed out to dashboards and other executive decision information systems, but with regards to open data can be pushed out to our data portal. Of course there is more to it than that, but you can get the gist of what's needed.

[brijsingh922]

We do not make decision on data. We analyze and synthesize data to create information, then we add this with our past experience to create knowledge. I am very good at from the use of information and knowledge since I have worked for over 40 yrs in problem solving using information. Mayor knows my interest. I would be helpful to your team at Open Chattanooga/code for America. Brij

On Friday, March 14, 2014, D. Brent Messer notifications@github.com wrote:

There will be some issues with staffing regarding the IT Department at first. There are not yet equipped to be able to fully comply with the policy as written. There are no DBA's, no true business analysts, Data specialists, etc. This is something I'm currently working on as we restructure. There are usually business analysts that act as the liaison to specific departments. One part of their role is to work on analyzing and changing business processes to be more efficient, but also to work as act as data analysts in conjunction with DBAs and other data specialists to create data marts/warehouses which they use to do business intelligence work. This data is pushed out to dashboards and other executive decision information systems, but with regards to open data can be pushed out to our data portal. Of course there is more to it than that, but you can get the gist of what's needed.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/cityofchattanooga/Chattanooga-Open-Data-Policy/issues/6#issuecomment-37640552 .

[ttmb1225]

"open source standards harness the power of distributed peer review and transparency to create high-quality, secure and easily integrated software at an accelerated pace and lower cost"

Really like the intention here to create transparency and peer review. City resources can benefit from the input of active community and intrinsic knowledge of their peers. There should be an acknowledgement that open data and open source are not the same animal.

Just thinking, the City should provide the best value and quality to the citizens in application development, including, but not limited to open source. Open source while collaborative and forward thinking, is not always free, or always quick to implement. A larger committee does not always mean quicker implementation, or better value over time.

I feel that as needs and requests are gathered, the assessment should be with a desire to provide the best solution, and when possible to the open source ideology.

[dbmesser]

@ttmb1225 You took the words right out of my mouth. Our goal is to provide value to the City departments and services, to add efficiency where possible, to help innovate, and to do so as transparently as possible. Correct, open source does not necessarily mean open data. It just means non-proprietary. For an IT department, it still means it needs to be supported and maintained like any other solution, open source or proprietary. We strive to find the most effective, fitting, logical, and economical systems possible. Be that proprietary or open source. The end goal is to have systems that will communicate and transmit data as seamlessly as possibly. Sometimes there are large systems that can do it all, other times a best-of-breed is required. What's important are interoperability and preferably foundations on things like open data protocols like the REST API for example. Getting the data, from any system whether proprietary or open source, out of a production data environment into an open and consumable format, such as a data cube for mining and BI, is not always an easy or quick task.

[brijsingh922]

If we really want to help city, may be we can start with CityStat since this system is already working, I hope so, if not then go with crash systems for traffic safety.

Recently TN State Governor gave revenue and expense figure for one FYR and claimed that TN is helping with Transparency. I, being a business professional, do not consider this as useful. If Governor had given to the details for few yrs data, we could make sense, or if he had given the data to the lower level organizational entity levels, we could make some sense. Please try to follow Baltimore city as example. Hope I can help you in your effort.

[junosuarez]

I really appreciate the conversation and having more people be involved. Perhaps some of these questions or suggestions would be better suited to their own threads. At the top of this page you can click the New Issue button to ask a new question or propose your own change.

In the interest of focus, I would ask that further discussion in this thread relate to the original proposal about including specifics around data stewardship in different departments.

Can anyone from the Mayor's office comment? /cc @aplannersguide @jennypark

[aplannersguide]

Thanks for bringing the conversation back around @jden. I think the conversation about staffing is an important one for the long term sustainability of the policy. Since so much is in flux with DIT right now I think the policy should be written to where we want to be as opposed to where we are now. @jennypark and I will work on some updated language and submit a pull request for everyone check out before making the changes.

[brijsingh922]

I agree that we need to look for better future and not where we are today. Thank you. Brij Note: I am using my iPad here in Chattanooga public library, read magazine, read books in the library but I have to pay $50 per yr to check out books. I use various City Services without paying the property tax since I live in County. We are thinking forward...........

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014, Tim Moreland notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks for bringing the conversation back around @jdenhttps://github.com/jden. I think the conversation about staffing is an important one for the long term sustainability of the policy. Since so much is in flux with DIT right now I think the policy should be written to where we want to be as opposed to where we are now. @jennypark https://github.com/jennypark and I will work on some updated language and submit a pull request for everyone check out before making the changes.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/cityofchattanooga/Chattanooga-Open-Data-Policy/issues/6#issuecomment-38052240 .

[jennypark]

The requirement of an open data advisory group, composed of open data coordinator for each city department, addresses @jden's initial concern about long-term sustainability of regular/proactive data release.

Closing this issue, as the policy was signed as an executive order with primarily higher level goals. The workflow and staffing will be determined internally by DIT and were not defined within the executive order.