2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Progress in Data and Technology 121
in the form of chicagocrime.org, a forerunner of EveryBlock.com (which
was created a few years later by the same developer, Adrian Holovaty).
But even in progressive regions, municipal governments outside the core
city almost universally remain impenetrable data fortresses. Despite the
fact that many local governments have not jumped aboard the open data
train, it brings hope to all of us who remember a time when almost no
noncensus data were digitally available at the neighborhood level.
Of course, government does not bear the whole burden of making
good data available. Corporate, academic, and civic institutions can
play an enormous role in releasing high-value data for community
improvement. Progress toward open data has been slower in these nongovernmental
sectors, as private intellectual property and corporate
trade secrets aren’t covered under the Freedom of Information Act. For
example, telecommunications companies have long resisted releasing
data about the number, type, and location of their broadband internet
customers, just as energy distributors resist releasing energy consumption
data. Universities and nonprofits are often understandably reluctant
to release their value-added data products, usually the result of extensive
labor. But in the age of open data, it might be more beneficial for these
providers to release their works for free use and accept the credit, rather
than try to monetize the resource.
Progress in Retail Information Markets
Although American government’s great leap forward into open data has
placed abundant resources in the hands of community revitalization
practitioners, abundant raw data do not immediately translate into usable
information. To the extent that government is in the information business,
it deals in wholesale, not retail assets. That is, it produces very few
finished products that constituents can consume directly. And its products
tend to be less useful at the more granular levels that are relevant to
local communities (e.g., census blocks, parcels, points, and street lines).
But there’s a ray of hope. In addition to the increased availability of
raw data, new technologies can enable the creation of data processing
and visualizations at a low cost for high-skill technicians. Leveraging
hard skills to reduce the cost of critical products and services is nothing
new. Think about the cost of wiring and plumbing an older home
as a do-it-yourself project versus contracting the entire job. Expertise
pays off not only in labor markets, but in private life as well. The