Homewood Children’s VillageTechnology & Data

Supporting the State of the Village Report

Prepared for the Homewood Children’s Village Steering CommitteeJuly 17, 2009

by Maryl Curran Widdows, Rhiza Labs www.rhizalabs.com Kevin Perkey, 3rc www.3rc.org Shawn Sheridan, Dewey and Kaye www.deweykaye.com

Westinghouse Safe Zone

New Gospel Choir Director

$2.25 Million Returned to Community

PCA Artist Residency

Community Events

The State of the Village Report for the Homewood Childrenʼs Village will be delivered to the community in 2010, a world full of new ways for people to engage with technology, media and information. The picture you see is a futuristic visualization of an interactive online map. Imagine community members and others interested in the community zooming through the streets of Homewood online, clicking on the places and issues that interest them and (1) watching an interview with the new choir director, (2) Seeing the proposed development plan for a safe zone around Westinghouse High School, (3) Learning about a new after school program, (4) finding out about local events, and (5) seeing a summary of $$ returned to the community by the HCV initiative.

These are just examples of ways technology and media can be leveraged to communicate the State of the Village to HCV stakeholders.

From here, we are going to focus on the technology that is most relevant to the planning phase. Lots of exciting ideas have been discussed in our earlier meetings - ways for community members to text in addresses or pictures of blight they are concerned about, the idea of giving teens handheld video recorders to start capturing stories about Homewood from older community members, creating IT systems to better coordinate how agencies work together to deliver services to residents, integrating DHS data and PPS data about young people in the community to have a clearer picture about what services are needed to improve educational achievement.

However, at this point we are going to take a step back to look at the pieces of the puzzle - how HCV staff, stakeholders and community members will interact with technology, media and data to understand the current, historical and evolving State of the Village and the ongoing process of revitalization.

The visionary neighborhood multimedia map is an example of one communication device that the HCV team will use to communicate the State of the Village. John and Aliya have mentioned there will definitely be a website, a slideshow presentation, one or more public events, reports or academic papers and perhaps a documentary.

Who are these communication devices for?

These communication vehicles are intended for a wide audience of stakeholders - residents of homewood, the homewood diaspora, funders, community leaders, national experts (Promise Neighborhood Committee) the academy, etc...

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re separating the HCV team from the stakeholders (even though are obviously included there). The core HCV team includes the people “on the ground” managing the project, as well as the board members and advisors directly associated with the management of the initiative. The tech team would include the various contractors who are helping support the data analysis and communication effort by obtaining and uploading data, providing data management and visualization systems,

We (the technical advisors) want to enable HCV to use data to communicate and make decisions. Before any communication pieces are created, the basic analysis that leads to an understanding of the State of the Village will be done by the HCV team and its advisors

Tools will be needed for HCV to use the data effectively and to track ongoing data collection efforts that inform program development and measure program impact

Those are the main pieces of the puzzle. now, how do they fit together? Remember, our primary purpose is to enable HCV to communicate with their stakeholders (through many possible vehicles)

A key part of that communication is data, which needs to be visualized by HCV to support the stories they want to tell. Much data already exists, but isn’t collected and accessible for HCV to use. A data visualization portal for the team with acquired relevant data will create a rich tool for communicating the state of the village.

As an ongoing process, HCV will need a structured feedback loop with the community to make sure the communication is effective, the team is working on the right problems and the team is aware of new developments, etc.

Not all useful data will come top-down. the community knows more about what’s happening “on the ground” than anyone, so tapping into that knowledge to create new data and validate existing data is important. Ongoing “on the ground” data collection efforts will also be needed to measure impact. Efforts should start now to capture the work that is already happening as well as to capture a baseline for measuring impact. 3rc and Dewey and Kaye are ideal partners to help with setting up this effort.

Also, the community should have direct feedback mechanisms within the communication pieces (e.g. call numbers, online forums/comments/ratings, town hall events, etc.).

And, client tracking of how community members are using services creates quantitative metrics, which feeds into the data stream (in aggregate form), which then becomes part of the decision and communication processes

now let’s take a step back and walk through a couple scenarios of how this process will work

In the immediate term, data can be acquired from known sources and a data visualization portal be installed. HCV can create a high fidelity state of the village with this content and tooling. for example, make a map...

...of the area around Westinghouse high school. With existing data the team can highlight assets and identify threats. Existing data on social services, after school programs and community assets can be used to identify the assets and existing crime, blight, business type, environmental safety and vacant property data can be used to identify potential threats. Once the assets and threats are identified, a buffer zone around the school can be drawn and the team can start working with the city, police and local residents to transition threatening sites, while preserving and supporting the identified assets.

or, the system could be used to identify families that would benefit from tax relief - using real estate data from the county you can identify households that have not taken advantage of the homestead exemption and the senior property tax exemption, using this information volunteers could offer to help them fill out the paperwork and perform a needs assessment to see what other services/exemptions they qualify for.

The data system will not only help identify families to approach first to offer assistance but will also track the impact of delivering more dollars directly to the community.

This chart is a cartoon of a break down of potential dollars returned to the community by type. There are lots of ways to present information - maps represent one way, but charts are also very effective communication tools.

or...

data can be collected from volunteers in the community with new tools (texting, etc.). this will create new datasets of both quantitative and qualitative data about the community

this data becomes part of the data stream. some of it may be sensitive, so it can be kept in a private (team-only) area of the visualization portal. once the analysis is done, it can be published in a public visualization.

or...

since we need to make sure we’re always fulfilling the needs of the community, there should be ongoing structured communication and feedback opportunities

there’s a lot going on here. where to start?

focusing on the primary interactions, we can easily identify a few things to do right away

• There are multiple pieces to the Road Map puzzle. Here are a few good places to start:

– Pre-load of data into 3rc Community Insight– Finalize HCV Community Insight design & launch a custom-branded data portal for HCV

– Engage the community of stakeholders

– Mobilize data collection

what will this data visualization portal look like?

Rhiza InsightOnline Mapping and Analysis Tools

A clean, simple to use interface for finding/exploring data

What is Rhiza Insight?

Rhiza Insight is a collaborative online mapping and analysis platform that creates custom branded data portals where organizations can share, manage and disseminate information among stakeholders. Easy mapping and analysis tools let users quickly create and share maps layered with data from many sources. Creations can be exported in a variety of formats to be shared through RSS, blogs, websites, Google Earth, GIS paltforms and more.

Includes powerful tools, but makes them easy to use

Contextual “Action” menus

Contextual “Action” menus

Users can subscribevia various feed formats

Contextual “Action” menus

Users can subscribevia various feed formats

Attribution, ratings & comments build trust

Allows users to understand the data, track how it is used

Users can create customized visualizations...

…and publish them as fully attributed snapshots

Snapshots can be shared within Insight, across the web, or printed

Importing data is easy… point to data and describe it

Here is an alternate interface that Rhiza designed to give community members access to human services data.

The data is organized into a searchable catalog, with powerful advanced search capabilities that allow users to quickly identify very specialized services in specific geographic areas (i.e., alcohol treatment services for a teen, located in x school district, with handicap accessible facilities)

Information about how services are consumed are mixed with census demographics to give program administrators, policy analysts and funders tools to determine how effectively programs are meeting the needs of the community.

APIs to the system allow the data to be presented in other ways. For example the United Way of Allegheny County presents the same data on their Help Connections website. United Way staff can edit and comment on the data from their website and their updates will be reflected on humanservices.net.

Again, what should our next steps be?

– Pre-load of data into 3rc Community Insight– Finalize HCV Community Insight design & launch a custom-branded data portal for HCV

– Engage the community of stakeholders

– Mobilize data collection