Everywhere you turn there are stories about the proliferation of data and the untapped potential of using data to make better decisions for your community. And it is true: data is more ubiquitous and more useable than ever before. Community decision makers have access to incredibly fine granularity about the interworkings of a city, and yet the list of truly transformative stories that reinforce the power of that data is short and uninspiring.

We have a theory about why that is: data-driven community decision-making, or city managing, is 1-part data interpolation, 1-part communication, and 1-part political timing. You need all three to be working together or your data cocktail will be flat and bland. So, even though there is ever increasing amounts of data out there, it is hard to bend it into a useful analysis, and it is nearly impossible to get that data to help you make a compelling story that can be understood and adopted by a lay audience.

Recently, a city manager in the rust belt was describing a problem he was having with his city council: each council-person had their own favorite issues and none of them were actually looking at what the on-the-ground data was indicating. One council person was dealing with police trust issues, another particularly concerned with code violations, and yet another who only wanted to talk about economic development. What he needed was an easy way to share real time information and a way to link these items together - a simplified data platform that could help him (and city council) find insights faster. By displaying crime data, demographic information, code violations, and new building permits in one place in an easily digestible form, the group was able to move toward a fact-based conversation - one centered around sound, visualized data.

Stories, like this one, are accumulating and the evidence to support data-driven storytelling as a tool for change is convincing.

So, if the data tells you a tree fell in the woods, and you can tell a story about it – it does indeed make a noise.

Confidence you’ve made the right decisions comes from knowing you have the right information–which isn’t easy. mySidewalk has simplified the way you access & analyze data to help you find insights faster. To discover how you can do more with data, visit mysidewalk.com.  

About the author: Stephen Hardy is the Chief Product Officer at mySidewalk by MindMixer.

For more information about our powerfully simple public data and engagement tool, visit mysidewalk.com or stop by booth #907.