#ThisWeekInData November 15, 2015

Each week we will bring you a summary of what happened this week on our site, on Twitter, and in the wider world of civic data. Suggest stories on Twitter with #ThisWeekInData.

The Commerce Department announced a new program, the Commerce Data Service, to help businesses better use government data. The service bills itself as a “public startup…tasked with enhancing the contribution of data to the economy and American well-being.” It plans to hire data scientists, developers, and engineers to work with Commerce data and provide it to businesses in useful forms.

On our site, we started a new list of executive-level data positions in cities across the country. We plan to build out this list over time to have more information about how cities are approaching the question of how to staff the data capacity in their organization. Email us to add your city!

At the National League of Cities conference in Nashville, e. Republic’s Center for Digital Government announced the results of its annual Digital Cities Survey. The initiative awards top-performing cities based on their survey responses about how they use data, engage citizens, and more. The winners this year were Philadelphia, PA, Alexandria, VA, Avondale, AZ, and Shawnee, KS.

The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development released a tool that maps 19 economic factors in New York City by neighborhood. The tool could potentially guide economic development discussions and investment by government, philanthropy, the private sector, and nonprofits.

In Governing, Eric Gordon writes about the projects of the second cohort of the City Accelerator program, a Living Cities initiative. Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Seattle are working to improve their community engagement efforts with a particular focus on engaging low-income residents.

Pittsburgh announced further progress on its work this year to modernize procurement. Code for America fellows recently finished three procurement-related projects: a tool to search contracts, one to track contracts, and one to alert businesses about opportunities to bid on city opportunities.

In a guest post, UMass Boston’s Michael Ward explains an exciting model that brings data capacity to cities and towns across Massachusetts that can’t afford full-time data positions. The university hires analysts so that cities and towns can pay for the service they need -- each analyst’s work is divided among multiple locations.

TOPICS