Spencer Apple's Projects

How can we improve government through data visualization?

I am a big fan of data visualization as it provides a nice front for understanding data. There are some awesome websites that now visualize very useful data both about the world and the USA. In order to be informed about the true state of the world, it's important to look at data collected by trusted agencies. Check out this great website: https://ourworldindata.org/, for some insightful explanations of publicly available datasets.

Some questions I think would be useful answered:

• Why does repaving the Milvia St. biking boulevard take so long to get executed?
• What are the most pressing issues that the Berkeley City government is thinking about?
• What's the best way for me to make an impact on issues I care about?
• What is the interconnectedness of government agencies?
• How do forms, letters, data, and other communication flow through people, organizations, and agencies when a decision is being made?
• How is the time spent when a decision is being made?

My thought is that data visualization could be used to present the data needed to understand the above questions to the public and other government agencies. Individuals could help their local governments make decisions that benefit their interests. For example, if we want to repave Milvia St., and we feel that Berkeley is lagging or not interested, who can we reach out too to query the status and relay our urgent interest for completion?

Could we overlay a layer of infrastructure projects over Google Maps or other mapping software? If each city, state, and federal government could send information for infrastructure projects to the same place, we could display it on a map and in other formats.

Another idea could be constructing and displaying the connected graph of government agencies and the entrypoints into those agencies. Something like a public LinkedIn designed to make it easier to send messages to the stakeholders responsible for certain projects. So we, the people, don't spam our public servants, this website would allow these stakeholders to create restricted mechanisms to request and receive information. Things like polls, surveys, and moderated forums.

After I wrote this I did some quick searching and realized that the City of Berkeley has a nice website describing their current projects. They also include a nice map of our Milvia St. construction. And indeed they even include a post describing the project, the impact, and how to contact the stakeholders.

I haven't actively seeked this information before writing this post and the City of Berkeley does provide answers to most of my questions on their website already. Perhaps there is no problem here and this might not be something that software needs to solve.