Giving Compass' Take:

• Betsy Gardner highlights Tulsa's innovative the Urban Data Pioneers program that brought community members together to compile and analyze data about the city's most pressing issues.

• Tulsa's program was organized by the local government, but similar programs could be facilitated by nonprofit groups. How might an organization replicate Tulsa's experience elsewhere? How might we improve upon it?

• Learn about creating a culture of data for school districts.

“Budget constraints are the mother of invention.”

Perhaps that’s a liberal interpretation of Plato’s quote, but then Plato never found himself beholden to expectant constituents in the middle of a budget cycle. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum did. In June 2016, newly elected Mayor Bynum found himself locked into the existing yearly budget with a promise to deliver on: he had campaigned on a data-driven platform, but now found himself fiscally stymied.

The solution was inventive community engagement that turned everyday Tulsans into the city’s data analysts: the Urban Data Pioneers program.

Without the flexibility to hire analysts halfway through the budget year, Mayor Bynum and Wagner began sourcing private sector analysts and reaching out to organizations like the local Code for America Brigade, Code for Tulsa, a local volunteer group of civic app-makers and software developers. Knowing the city had public, open datasets to offer, Mayor Bynum and Wagner hoped that outside practitioners would be interested in using those resources to explore civic issues. After putting out the word to potential partners about this new, experimental Urban Data Pioneers group, they held their first meetup at City Hall. Interested Tulsans were invited to be part of the initial ten-week cohort. As Wagner explained, “We didn’t know what we really wanted from them, but we knew we had data about crime … blight, property code violations, things like that.”

After ten weeks of independent work, the Pioneers assembled at City Hall and presented their findings, giving presentations with valuable data insights on everything from traffic crashes to land use. City representatives knew they had a success.

Read the full article about data analysis by Betsy Gardner at Data-Smart City Solutions.