Empowering communities with data: Role of data intermediaries for communities' data utilization

Abstract

Data have significant potential to address current societal problems not only at the federal and state levels, but also in smaller communities, in neighborhoods, and in the lives of individuals. While the proposition for this potential is that data are and will be shared with and reused by and for communities at different levels, not all data are systematically or routinely shared for reuse with communities due to social, structural and technical infrastructure barriers. Data intermediary organizations can play a significant role in removing existing barriers while unlocking the potential of data for all, particularly for communities with limited human or financial resources, limited access to existing data infrastructures, and underserved populations. Considering the significance of the data intermediary organizations on local communities, this study aims to explore the role of intermediaries that usually facilitate community members/organizations' data utilization. The findings of this study reveal that data intermediary organizations play four major roles that are crucial in communities' data utilization: (1) democratizing data, (2) adding value to existing data, (3) enhancing communities' data literacy, and (4) building communities' data capacity. This study has several important implications to offer as a solution to overcome the challenges of data reuse at the local level.

Toward community‐inclusive data ecosystems: Challenges and opportunities of open data for community‐based organizations

“…Even if they were part of a community data collection and representation, they were often seen as a passive player and, thus, excluded from local data collection design; instead, they rather passively participated in a given setting, without a chance to ask questions or raise their voices to reflect their opinions. The tensions and controversies generated by this passive participation from the top‐down approach in community engagement are not new (e.g., Stuedahl, Runardotter, & Mörtberg, 2016; Yoon et al, 2018) and made the communities question the openness and deemed desire and trust in open data context.…”

“…Perhaps this is why many community organizations face needs and shortcomings in their own data collections. Previous studies have also reported that community organizations, with or without partnership with academic or data intermediary organizations, collect local data to complement these limitations in existing data sets, but not all are equipped with the proper financial or human resource capacities (Yoon et al, 2018).…”

“…To find community organizations that utilized data for their community developmental work, we first identified data intermediary organizations in different U.S. cities, being that data intermediaries are known to support communitiesʼ data use and work closely with community organizations (Yoon et al, 2018). We used a Google search and a review of the 42 partner organizations across 30 cities included in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP, http://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/), which is a collaborative effort between the Urban Institute (http://www.urban.org/) and local partners to further the development and use of neighborhood information systems in local policymaking and community building.…”

“…As decisions become more data‐driven, there is a clear need for local community members to engage with existing data and utilize data for their community development (Yoon, Copleand, & McNally, 2018). A few studies give attention to the levels of community engagement by examining community‐based organizationsʼ (CBOs) need for rich data sets with social indicators—such as health, socioeconomic well‐being, geospatial, dwelling conditions and safety, and homelessness prevalence data—given the context of CBOs focus on communitiesʼ economic, service, and capacity development (Johnson, 2015; Thinyane, Goldkind, & Lam, 2018).…”

U.S. state and state capital open government data (OGD): A content examination and heuristic evaluation of data processing capabilities of OGD sites

“…The degree to which local (municipal or state) OGD users differ from national OGD users is not fully explored. While a study of OGD users of Raleigh Open Data suggests that local users largely fit the profile of those who work in the tech industry (O'Conner, , p. 28), interviewees in another study reported that “‘a lot of people (from the community) were intimidated’ when using secondary data” and that “publicly available raw data are often not user‐friendly to community members” (Yoon, Copeland, & McNally, , pp. 4–5).…”