Achieving Data Equity for Marginalized Communities

Marginalized communities in cities across America lack the resources and skills needed to benefit from the open data movement. This deficit in skills and resources results in these communities being further marginalized as they cannot use data to advocate for change with their governments. We’ve developed a data dashboard along with data literacy workshops and data ambassador programs with the hope of building data capacity within marginalized communities we are working with in Atlanta. Our redesigned data infrastructure prototype makes use of off-the-shelf software platforms to enable community leaders in these marginalized communities in the collection, cleaning, analysis and dissemination of data stories. To test our prototype, we have collected workforce training datasets and are working with community leaders to create data stories that highlight their point of view. This process will help us understand how data can be made more equitable for marginalized communities we are working with. 

Marginalized communities across America are being left behind and are not benefitting from the ongoing open data movement. Such communities usually lack the time, skills or resources needed to find and analyze data they can use to create data stories that advocate for change. We are working with community leaders from marginalized communities in Atlanta to better understand their data needs and design data infrastructures that are community owned and operated.

Vine City and English Avenue, two neighborhoods in the Westside of Atlanta are consistently ranked among the poorest in the country. These predominantly black neighborhoods trail other neighborhoods in terms of their educational attainment (27.9% have a B.A or higher), median income ($21,513), unemployment (18.2%) and other key factors. Leaders in such communities know the scale of the problem they are dealing with, but often lack the skills and capacities needed to aggregate relevant data that can quantify the problem. Our data infrastructure prototype and associated programs have been designed to build within community leaders the capacity to use such data and tools to create data stories that highlight their point of view

The Westside communities in Atlanta are home to many landmark institutions and have a rich history associated with the American Civil Rights movement. But desegregation and the economic downturn of the early 2000’s have riddled the community with problems of foreclosures, abandoned homes, drugs and crime. These neighborhoods are occupied by predominantly African Americans, where nearly 42 percent of the households are in poverty and the unemployment rate is twice that of the rest of Fulton County.

I have partnered with Communities Who Know, a non-profit organization that has been working with the Westside community on development and advocacy efforts for the past eight years. Together, we organized nine data literacy workshops last year, with the goal of teaching community leaders the basics of data storytelling and also soliciting their opinions on how a data infrastructure could serve their needs. The idea of a community owned data infrastructure came out of these workshops. We therefore prototyped such a community owned data infrastructure using off-the-shelf software platforms and launched the Communities Who Know Data Ambassadors Program earlier this year. Together, these solutions help us build data capacity within these communities so we can make data more equitable. 

Our goal with the reimagined CWK data infrastructure is to better align it with the needs that community leaders expressed during the data literacy workshops. One of the key issues that came up during the workshops was the need to hold stakeholders accountable for the kind of data that they make publicly available. Where has the data come from and how has it been modified during the analysis process? Workshop participants asked for transparency in how the data was made and used to tell different kinds of stories.

Researchers have argued that doing justice to stories involves listening carefully to the individuals we are working with so we can ask meaningful questions and put the many stories that come out in conversation with each other, with the goal of moving towards collective action that can challenge the ongoing injustice. We follow this process by working individually with each of the community leaders who are interested in exploring issues like workforce training and community impact.

Under the umbrella of the Communities Who Know Data Ambassadors Program, we have brought together a group of community leaders who have expressed interest in using data to tell stories that forward their point of view. This includes, among other things, using data to tell stories that highlight the strengths and assets within the community rather than just its weaknesses.

One of the goals of the data ambassadors program is to foster a collaborative data infrastructure where community leaders can come together and create the kinds of data stories they are interested in.  We have prototyped this data infrastructure using off the shelf components like Google’s DataStudio, Google Drive and Google Groups. The DataStudio platform allows multiple users to work together in exploring data and building reports. It also shows where specific data sources originated and the ways in which they have been modified. Although using DataStudio does require some training, the learning curve is not as steep as it is for other data platforms like Tableau, d3 etc. Google Drive is the repository where participants can store their datasets and Google Groups is the medium they can use to communicate with each other. The goal at this stage is to understand what parts of the data infrastructure can be implemented with off the shelf software platforms and what would need to be custom built for our community.

While there are other civic data dashboards that offer data and insights, they are often built for more sophisticated data users whose skills and needs differ from those community members we are working with. Several organizations have built civic data dashboards for their own stakeholders without understanding the needs of the communities they are gathering data about. Our partnership with the Communities Who Know organization along with our civic engagement process with different community leaders over the past three years have allowed us to build trust with community members while also understanding their data related needs. This has allowed us to customize the data dashboard and literacy programs to their specific needs.

We have prototyped our data infrastructure using off-the-shelf software platforms so we can quickly iterate and change course if the leaders we are working with demand it. Prototyping with free and online software platforms has allowed us to save time and resources so we can understand exactly what parts of the data infrastructure work for such a community and what do not. Knowing this will allow us to make changes where necessary and even build custom solutions when required. This ongoing process of prototyping and deploying will help us arrive at a data infrastructure solution that is customized to the needs of the community leaders in the Westside neighborhood.

Our initial data dashboard was built in Tableau and included portals for community demographics, education, public safety among others. We also organized data literacy workshops and came up with a set of guidelines and resources that others can use when organizing such data literacy workshops within their own communities.

Our redesigned data infrastructure uses off the shelf components like Google’s DataStudio, Google Drive and Google Groups. The DataStudio platform allows multiple users to work together in exploring data and building reports. Although using DataStudio does require some training, the learning curve is not as steep as it is for other data platforms like Tableau, d3 etc. Google Drive is the repository where participants can store their datasets and Google Groups is the medium they can use to communicate with each other.

We have brought these platforms together under the Communities Who Know Data Ambassadors Program, whose goal is to identify and train community leaders who can serve as data ambassadors for others in the community. We are working individually with each of the ambassadors we have identified so far, to understand their needs and train them in using the platforms in our data infrastructure. The role of these data ambassadors, as we envision it, would be to offer similar kind of support to individuals and organizations in the community, to help them find the data they need and create relevant data stories.

We have been engaged with the Westside communities for the past seven years. Our engagement over these years has resulted in a variety of online and offline projects that have tried to advocate for change while preserving and highlighting the assets of the community. One such project was a data dashboard that made data about the Westside community's demographics, education, history and safety freely available under a single website. Although this dashboard intended to involve the community in key aspects of its development, there were several logistical, organizational, economic and technical issues the that prevented the organization (Communities Who Know) from involving the community in the development of the dashboard. We have learnt from this process and have structured our engagement and the data infrastructure so it can be more accessible to the community leaders we are working with.

We have organized training workshops, meetings and interviews with community leaders to better understand how they use data and how our redesigned data infrastructure can better serve their needs. We are now working to ensure that the human, technical and organizational elements of the data infrastructure enable rather than hinder the community leaders in finding relevant data and creating data stories. 

About 15 community leaders in the Westside have expressed interest in using our data infrastructure and becoming data ambassadors. 

In the coming year, we hope these leaders will develop the skills and capacities needed to sustain their own data infrastructure without the need for too much support.

In about five years time, we hope to take our solution to other communities across America and customize it to their needs. Given the nature of our solution, we will likely be working with small groups of community leaders (10-20) within specific neighborhoods. 

Our goal within the next year and the next five years is to take our solution to other communities across America so we can customize it to meet their data needs. This is not a one size fits all process and will require a deep level of engagement with each of the communities so the solution we are offering can actually solve the problem they are facing. 

One of the barriers we face is getting community leaders to commit their time and energy to learning new data skills. These community leaders are involved in a variety of advocacy efforts like reducing homelessness, improving education and growing community gardens, which they believe are far more urgent than building their data capacity. 

One way we have been trying to overcome this barrier is to offer stipends to the organizations that the community leaders work for, in return for the time they spend with us. This has been partly successful as it has resulted in more community leaders being willing to attend our workshops and trainings. But we have run out of funds and would need more to maintain our training and outreach efforts. 

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We've got the experience of working closely with this community for the past several years. 

Communities Who Know is a registered non-profit.