2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Progress in Data and Technology 105
transparency and greater citizen engagement by making more government
data, documents, tools, and processes publicly available. 25
With hundreds or thousands of data files, open data sites can be overwhelming,
but other government agencies have developed websites with
curated data and step-by-step guidance. These decision-support tools
are aimed at specific audiences. They combine multiple sources of data
relevant to a given task and provide visuals and guidance on using the
data. An example is HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development’s
new eCon Planning Suite, which is defined as a “collection of new
online tools to help grantees create market-driven, leveraged housing
and community development plans” (US Department of Housing and
Urban Development 2013b, 4). All localities that want to receive HUD
grants under a number of programs are required to submit a consolidated
plan. The new online template saves grantees time by prepopulating
the plan with the latest housing and economic data related to their
priorities. In addition, the eCon Planning Suite Maps tool has datasets
available to help grantees assess market conditions for any user-defined
geography. Grantees can insert maps and data tables they generate into
their plan document.
Commercial Portals
Many commercial firms serve the private sector by providing tailored
tools to access small-area data for site selection and marketing. Some
firms have also sponsored public websites as both a public service and as
a marketing vehicle for their company and products. One early example
is GeoCommons, which was unveiled in 2007 by GeoIQ, a private
company that sells software and support to GIS enterprise customers.
Users can use the GeoCommons site to explore, create, and share geographic
data and maps licensed under a Creative Commons license. It
was relaunched as a cloud-based service in 2011 with advanced analysis
and development features (Gorman 2011). The site began with roughly
1,500 datasets at launch and grew to 50,000 open source geographic
datasets in 2013 (GeoIQ 2007).
Google leveraged its expertise in search engines and user interfaces to
create the Public Data Explorer in 2010. The site’s goal is to help users
find reliable data and statistics on a variety of subjects while providing
tools to create dynamic mashups using graphs, maps, and bubble charts.
The company prioritized what data it made available based on an analysis