Discussion of Presentations and Implications for NICS 9/27/04 (3C9)
facilitated by Andy Reamer (3BD)
> N.B. This page is a first version, please mind there are fragments and some personal notation. Notes will be edited for clarity by COB, Tuesday, September 28, 2004. (3BE)
- Given what youve read about NICS, What value do you see NICS providing in your applications? (3BF)
-Michael: Adding to and building an infrastructure that works across the country is a enormaouus task. I admire what you are doing (3BG)
Nuturing is important for a national system to have much impact (3BH)
-Ri I feel very information poor as to what would come national and regional. If NICS could get smart enought o figure out what data adds value. COuld NICS be a sort? NNIP has done some cross site work and it credentials the work done back home. By participating in national, work it cresdentials local work and we learn from each other. Figuring out how to connect local capacity to natinal capacity could be powerful but it isuncharted water. (3BI)
Oakland - This initiative gives momentum; it tells gov't parties that this isn't going away. NICS gives momentum. The other piece I see, are tools. Looking at some pretty intensive tool development, and starting to figure out which are the most effective tools. Again, the lack of duplicating efforts. (3BJ)
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To what extent to do you rely on federal and state datasets and to what extent are you frustated by that dependency? (3CF)
> ;RI:Census. We haven't done a good job with trend data. :We're increasingly being asked to look at geography beyond Providence to develop data systems for the state of Rhode Island. Census data, block level data, gives us a nice starting point. We've been using it for demographics. When it comes to economics, I think we underutilize those sets (3CG)
? (3CH)
- We use it because it's administrative. (3BK)
Milwaukee ;; (3BL)
Oakland ;; To echo what RI stated, we underutilize national datbases. We simply don't time and resources to mine then. They are very useful, very rich. We march on with the issues that are pressing in the community, and haven't stepped back to do the thorough analysis that includes using national datasets to look at regional data. (3BM)
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R. Harrison. Clarifing panel responses: It seems that it should not be data, it should be contextualized information that helps you place your issues regionally. It sounds that what you really could use are tools, to help understand and manipulate the data; tools to also handle the confidentiality issues that arise in working with the level of geography community groups as yourself are working. (3BO)
RI - I was thinking of it as cheat sheet, a how-to, to help us figure out how to use data. We've had a hard time to use the employment piece. We'd had a frustrating time with ES202. We'd love to see people pushing that in an important way, to help us. (3BP)
Milwaukee - I've been waiting to work with LEHD. LEHD is a case of state's data being extremely rich after being taken from the local level. I'd love to see more work to utilize and access this data. - Doing some work to see what is available, and what the barriers are to the data, would give a good sense of the terrain, with respect to local data. (3BQ)
Oakland - Growing with NNIP has been helpful for the support from the NNIP CoP. This would be a resource to local participants as NICS moves ahead. Tool/Confidentiality realm is something that NICS could help us in regards to gentrification data, and dymanic data that informs us better about the change that is happening in our neighborhoods, and who that is affecting. (3BR)
> A. Reamer, asks J. Marks to give a short explanation of the LEDH program at (?). > J. Marks explains the LEDH program. (3BS)
J. Ferreira Highlights system architecture questions relevant for the Panel. (?) (Metadata, standard framework) ;; Milwaukee - Use of metadata has some value. But there are some disadvantages, thinking about data in a way that metadata can drive how data is collected at the local level, or about how people think about how data should be used. There is a capacity to tap data systems. But not to create, too rapidly, a set of stable incidators or metadata. We are creating, not a static data form, but a statistical system that is dynamic. ;; RI - pick a couple of places to go deep, and work through the issues there. ;; Oakland - I have a special situation because of working with UC Berekely, in regards to ESRI costs. Using this to cut operational costs would be a strong point. (3BT)
P. Sabety - What I hears is that 'We're doing much more real time data collection, closer to neighboroods, closer to what is happening in our cities.'; How are you balancing your need to support parcel level data, and your organizational need to have greater coverage to continue to exist, grow and meet needs of your growing constitutents. ;; RI. For us, politics have been local, but funding hasn't been. In terms of extending our geographic bounds from Providence, we've been helping others build their capacity. In order for us to reponsive to our needs, for crime reponse, we're crossing bounds, working regional (?). ;; Milwaukee. It's important to develop that larger picture. It's important that enough data be developed to even enable the coverasation about the larger picture. In some situations, so stressed, groups aren't thinking beyond their neighborhood bounds. (3BU)
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- G. Cross, MITRE - To what degree to locals use the data you provide? How much are you duplicating efforts at the federal level when you prime federal data sets (3BY)
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- E.Spar - The area I think NICS will play a fantastic role, will be in the area of standards. In your documentation, do you have a process of defining how often you update, what you're defintions are, confidentiality protections (3C5)
- Oakland - Yes, that is part of our process. We're partnered with UC Berekely's GIS center. We've been working with them (?)... What we're working on is people who can upload data, and use it on our system, but not actually including that dataset in our system. It's about building community capacity--on how to survey, how to collect data so that it is generalizable. For many organizations, it's not a priorty--to say they've sampled so-many people, with a reponse rate of this amount. We're moving towards more standards. (3C6)
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