Campus, News

Accessibility and reliability

An Open Data Panel at California State University, Long Beach discussed the advantages and shortcomings of having public government data on Monday.

The panel that Gwen Shaffer, an assistant professor of the Journalism and Mass Communications Department, moderated was meant to inform Long Beach citizens about open data, in this case government data; ask any opinions for Long Beach to integrate an open data service; and answer any questions or concerns they might have.

Open data essentially refers to data that is available to the public whenever needed. This includes statistics about crimes, economic information and knowledge on necessary permits for construction or renovation.

Ev Boyle, the founding director of civic tech at University of Southern California, started by explaining what open data is, and how data is constantly being researched and gathered for various purposes and the idea of open data is to allow it to become readily accessible to the general public.

Director of the Long Beach Innovation Team John Keisler said that he believes that open data could allow small businesses, such as a new pizza place, access to information for business licensing or demographics in the area.

Doug Smith, a database editor for the Los Angeles Times, responded that he believed that “everything should be public,” except in regards to names of minors and victims of sexual abuse, but he noted that the analysts “post data that’s not really useful.”

Smith acknowledged that as a reporter he uses data to answer questions and while public data will answer some questions, they may not answer all the ones the public might ask. For example he showed how a data set illustrates if you were to look up salaries of specific employees by name. The data will only give the salary, but not the position the person holds or their history within the company, according to Smith.

Nyariana Maiko, chief information officer for the Port of Long Beach, wants to see data for the transport of customer products in “when the boats originate in Asia, pass through the ports of Long Beach, and then arrive to people like you.”

Small businesses would like to receive information on when they can get containers because they rely on certain products and this information would let me know exactly when they will arrive and plan around it, Maiko said.

However, Maiko comments that “not every piece of data” is of importance and are looking for “key performance indicators.” KPIs mean, according to Maiko, the data that will “make the most impact.”

The panel served as an informative discussion of beneficial aspects of open data for the community as well as some things that could be improved upon with it.

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