Last week I kicked-off a new role at KPMG’s Chicago offices as the Director of Analytics for Strategic Insights. It’s not only a new role for me, but a new position within KPMG. Just like Chicago, cities, states, and governments across the globe have been looking at using data for greater efficiency, improving quality of […]
It has been a joy working for the City of Chicago as the Chief Data Officer. After moving to Chicago, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to serve for my adoptive city in the best role in government. Friday is my last day with the city after 5.5 years. Long ago, I set some goals for […]
It seems with the rise of a new technology, it soon follows on the discussion on how to standardize it. This is true for open data and the call for standards of key data sets where data on a particular topic would share the same schema across cities, states, counties, and countries. The promise is […]
I received the last Annual Report by Nicholas Felton. It is his 10th report in a series that began with a thin volume in 2005. I hesitate to say that I’ve “finally” received the report because I was not anticipating the conclusion of the series in any way. Instead, I had always looked forward to these […]
Naturally, a paper titled Big Data and Big Cities: The Promise and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life piqued my interest. From the discussion, of “big data” four V’s, Glaeser et al. focused on large volumes of data. The paper discussed two types of big data: while researchers typically used aggregated data, such as totals by ZIP codes […]
Quick wins. An entire post–nay, novel–could be written about the life of quick wins. For data portals, quick wins are important. I’ve talked to a number of cities who have a fresh data portal and they wonder what should be posted first so they can get the quick wins needed to prove the data portal adds […]
Open data has a number of uses: transparency, economic development, galvanizing technology, and also consumer protection. A recent experience crystalized this fact. Super Bowl 49 was a messy day in Chicago. By the time the game ended, 16″ of snow had accumulated on the ground, and would still fall throughout the night. A hard, gusty wind […]
PowerPoint and Excel aren’t the enemy, though a lot of people to seem to think they are. Frequently, I hear others say “don’t use PowerPoint” or snicker when someone mentions conducting analysis with Excel. This is wrong. There is nothing wrong with Excel or PowerPoint; I am a fan and user of both programs. The problem […]
I’ve often found myself exploring a library’s map room or thumbing through old Census records while taking study breaks. I was often surprised how I could become engrossed with old data. Some of the fascination comes from a historical narrative of history from the perspective of that generations point-of-view, even if it was based on faulty logic […]
Luke Fretwell posted an interesting article on the role CDO has as a business development officer: If I was a Chief Data Officer […] I would also proactively reach out to these companies to find out what data they’re interested in that government might be able to provide. This could help determine data release schedule/priority […]