Your City in Numbers

We’re in our kitchen with a couple of IPython notebooks open. Aarti has used SQL before, but with the help of an LLM is able to query the troves of city data that are contained inside the pandas dataframe. It is one of many datasets that the city provides through its open data initiative, and it turns out there is a standard that multiple cities (including NYC, LA, and Seattle) use to provide the public access to everything from 311 cases, crime, government contracting, transporation, and lobbyist firms registering with the City’s Ethics Commission.

Our goal is to try to understand ways to help the city work more effectively, and which actions might have the most impact. Sifting through the data gives us an understanding of things like San Francisco’s procurement process and also a sense of frustration at being provided with so much data, but ultimately despite a number of open standards, how difficult it actually is to work with.

Data has certainly been key in driving a variety of decisions in my day job, and perhaps the most important is which problems and areas to focus on. The hope is that we can do something similar in engaging locally. I write some convenience functions to better analyze the data. I feel a tap on my shoulder. Aarti points me to a graph she’s created. I smile.