2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Institutional Context 49
2012 and beyond, Gartner (2011) suggests that information technology
departments will evolve from providing technical support to coordinating
information technology activities. This move means that technology
users will have a hand in developing solutions to the challenges they face
on the job rather than accepting solutions provided by the information
technology department. Referred to as data scientists, this new breed of
local government workers will need to understand both the business
questions that need to be addressed using the data and the technology
used in analyzing the data. These skills may reside in an individual or,
perhaps more importantly, be present in a team brought together to
address a particular challenge.
Local governments stand to benefit significantly from more effective
use of big data in three key areas: transparency and accountability, performance
measurement and management, and innovations in service
delivery. These big data issues are discussed below.
Transparency and Accountability
In recent years, there has been a tremendous call for greater transparency
and accountability in government operations as a result of gross
mismanagement (Bell, California) and political corruption (Detroit,
Michigan). Data have a critical role to play in providing greater oversight
of local government operations and management. Citizens, who pay for
local government services with their property tax dollars, deserve to have
easy access to data to understand how public funds are spent and what
results are being received from those expenditures. Web applications
that allow an individual to drill down through data to understand what
projects are under way and what the associated costs of those projects
are help to create much-needed trust between citizens and their local
government.
Elected officials and other government executives must regularly
make decisions about which public sector programs they should fund,
at what levels, and for how long. All too often, policy makers have little
or no impartial evidence on which to base their investment decisions.
Investments are often made in untested programs that are delivered with
little consistency or quality control, and without effective evaluation to
determine their effectiveness. Having data offers a solid basis for discussion
about program priorities, funding needs, and a host of other daily
decisions that make an organization run.