General Questions (3S2)
- For all questions, we should consider what are the implications of the answers for NICS governance and finance? For NICS systems architecture? For a design of NICS that can meet participant needs? (3RV)
- What types of local institutions play key roles in building and operating a CSS? (3RW)
- What are the best ways to encourage local agencies to share data and to collaborate? (3RX)
- What governance models are in use, and what is the experience to date? (3RY)
- How are CSS financed, and what is the experience to date? (3RZ)
- What confidentiality safeguards are employed and how are they being reflected in formal data sharing agreements? (3S0)
- How are institutional responsibilities at the local level likely to change (if at all) as the field moves from a data center model toward virtual data warehousing? (3S1)
Summary of Discussion (3YH)
- Starting point for Governance and Finance discussion needs to be a structure that demonstrates leadership, embodies the vision, and engenders trust (3YI)
- To do this, we need to develop an entity with a clear direction, board and authority to take action (3YJ)
- The enterprise needs all the components of a good institution: (3YK)
- Executive capacity--the ability to credential, set standards, open access to users (3YL)
- Judicial capacity--the ability to control and enforce use of those standards and credentials (3YM)
- Legislative capacity--the ability to develop and create the rules, credentials, standards and protocols necessary for operations (3YN)
- Constituency Groups--a capacity to reach, involve and serve all constituents and users, such as: state, federal and local levels of government; or private, non-profit or commercial enterprises. (3YO)
- Models to emulate: NICS should be thought of like the Bonneville Power Authority--an enterprise with the ability to absorb power (data) from multiple sources, and disseminate power (data) to multiple sources (3YP)
- some models to consider might be: (3YQ)
- joint powers authority (3YR)
- Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (3YS)
- LISC model of financing, which is a national partnership of foundations, requiring a local match as part of enterprise (3YU)
- State Infrastructure Bond Banks (3YT)
- Look at NSF WHite paper authored by Valerie Gregg on Cyberinfrastructure (3YV)
- Incentives for cooperation, collaboration and participation in NICS (3YW)
- We should look to Wall St and Main St. How do we design ways that the market dynamic for more and better community information helps sustain NICS, once established? (3YX)
- NICS needs to be "Demand driven" by its users (3YY)
- Consider using vehicles such as "matching" funding to ensure federal-local cooperation and participation (3YZ)
- Systems must produce relevant and useful data to be self-sustaining, and should be locally driven (3Z0)
- Potential New Stakeholders for NICS (3Z1)
- Consider Homeland Security. THe group was ambivalent about the advisability of linking to Homeland Security issues, and suggested that this should be an issue that is resolved or pursued at a local level, not the national level (3Z2)
- Libraries are a good information network with a strong commitment to community. Library of Congress has a big new effort focused on digital libraries and archiving electronic data (3Z3)
- Consider the role of universities to help with designing the longterm needs of such a network (3Z4)
- NCHS has a menu of agreements that it uses for a stratified set of users, each with different types of access profiles. NICS could learn from that effort and maybe adopt. (3Z5)
- New guy at DHS directs its "Metadata Center of Excellence". Consider role for these standards and potential crossover with concept of sustainable infrastructure measurement. (3Z6)
- Private sector users/providers to NICS. THis is a subject of a future NICS workshop. (3Z7)
- NSF Digital Government Program community of researchers (3Z8)
- NICS Functions should steer direction on the "form" of governance/administration (3Z9)
- NiCS needs to help communities "tell their story" better, and provide "information for action" (3ZA)
- For NICS to be effective, it needs to have the following functions: (3ZB)
- NICS needs to establish standards, and function like IEEE for metadata stds for community data (3ZC)
- NICS needs to establish profiles and credentials to establish pathways for trusted participants to obtain data. Without these, sensitive (and valuable) data will not be contributed (3ZD)
- NICS needs to be a place where Best Practices in community data systems are collected and disseminated (3ZE)
- NICS needs to leverage the power of local statistics and data to contribute to increasing the statistical literacy of the media and the US public as a whole (3ZF)
- NICS needs to address protocols to address privacy, confidentiality and HIPAA issues forthrightly and comprehensively (3ZG)
- NICS needs to be established to tap the "network effects" of technology and distributed intelligence (3ZH)
- Potential NICS toolsets (3ZI)
- develop tools to allow some folks to do analysis of sensitive or confidential datasets to develop findings for local communities, "lifting the veil" (3ZJ)
- develop tools to allow comparability analyses between local communities, e.g. middleware (3ZK)
Topical Discussion (3DF)
1. Local Institutions (3R4)
- Building Blocks (3CM)
- Need to involve "Organizing entities" - those constituency building groups (3DG)
- Being able to benefit to data sharing - demonstrating tangible uses for government data that lead to specific policy directions; information advising policy decisions, that governments find useful. (3DH)
- Leadership and Vision is important (3LP)
- Partners make it work. Typically, government is not in the forefront of successful community efforts (3ZL)
- True benefits are seen in local communities because NGOs can do what government cannot (3ZM)
- Critical to local efforts is the ability to address diversity issues in small area data (3ZN)
- Finance (3LQ)
- Need to elaborate the fiscal how-to and how-not-to – the power of NICS will be coming up with creative options for financing for local groups. (3LR)
- If NICS is infrastructure, then it should be (only) infrastructure finance. (3LS)
- What national issues would NICS address nationally? (3R5)
- Funding opportunities may depend on how NICS addresses safety, interior security/homeland defense (3LT)
- NICS could offer the stability in the approach to safety and security issues that is irrespective of which administration is in power (3LU)
- Q: What pieces of NICS gets funded by federal sources (i.e. Sources like homeland security)? What gets funded in-kind? (3LY)
- Homeland Security is one possible constituent/source (3LX)
- Be careful of unintended consequences of positioning NICS around security issues for funding; a potential result could be distancing from the community issues that are most important. (3LV)
- We need to think about the relationships of our potential funders – and consider how the sources of funding has effects on development of NICS (3LW)
- Potential Sources (3M2)
- interest in NICS-type development expressed by foundations (3R6)
- disseminators of federal data -- those that understand the power of actionable, accessible data (3R7)
- Funding Model/entrepreneurial (3R8)
- Fee-for service model (not federal funder-grantee, ensuring more independence for NICS/partners/data suppliers) (3R9)
- Analogous to a bank? Shareholder model? (3RA)
- One issue with a shareholder model, you loose some degree of entrepreneurship and responsiveness. (3RB)
- Effect of funding model on the type of data collected, type of analysis performed; what are standards on who are users. This should be open to all, no censors of analysis because of ideological differences. (3M1)
2. Sharing Data (3RC)
- Governance (3MA)
- National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) started 10 years ago, was a supply driven initiative (as some e-gov’t initiatives). Arguments on why the system was needed were necessary. There is a sense, this is/will be a demand driven system. This changes the approach, and what is possible. (3RD)
- If this is a demand-driven system, rather than a top-down/federally funded initiative, governance must address the incentives for sharing and participation. (3M9)
- How should NICS look? Who should be at the table? (3MB)
- Draw membership that is not only socio-economic data producers? Many levels of government? Private sector? (3MD)
- Data Disseminators are clear stakeholders (3ME)
- How is data shared? (3CP)
- How do we address confidentiality? (3CQ)
- Beyond institutional user, we should ensure public user should be able to connect to NICS resources. For this "public use" level, we can simply pipe those data sets federal and local agencies want to share (e.g.: Census, Superfund data) (3RE)
- What are incentives to share? (3CR)
- For those that provide data into NICS, if and when they look for funding, NICS should offer that they could get back what they give, either implicitly through being connected in the CoP or by other more explicit efforts to help them procure funding. (3RF)
- Demonstrate trust that their data (e.g.: employment data) will not be misappropriated (3RG)
- there will be an agreement signed by users on limits of the data’s use, its citation, and penalties for violating agreement; different levels of access will provide additional protections for data (3M8)
- Which data to include? (3RH)
- Data people commonly use together, use NICS to build the piping. A different discussion for datasets that aren’t purposed for broad use. (3RI)
3. How will changes in technology and data needs impact financial sustainability? (3RJ)
- Down the road, there may be a possible Multiplier effect – when data from NICS-piped systems becomes standard for trend analysis. So we should not necessarily be exhaustive in our inclusion, but opportunistic (3RK)
4. Other initiatives (3RL)
5. Other Models on infrastructure’s application/development (3RM)
- National Reinvestment Corporation (gov’t chartered) (3MN)
- Lessons from distributed Power Infrastructures (3RN)
- Bonneville Power Administration - built the piping, and power comes from various suppliers (3RO)
- California's Joint Powers Authority (3RP)
- Shared cyber-infrastructure within NSF. White paper on Cyber Infrastructure and Digital Government (3RQ)
- previously discussed model in the federal community: data librarians role for disseminating data (3MP)
- Geo-Spatial One Stop (3MR)
- FedStats (3MT)
- to develop, engender a statistical literacy in the general community. (3MU)
- What is the NICS governance model: GSE? National non-profit? (3MV)
- NICS role could be providing longer-term vision and guidance on new technologies and their role for the community statistics (3MQ)
- independent, shared authority by government stake-holders (3MW)
