Strengthening community data

Abstract

Data, big data, and data analytics are contemporary touchstones for rational and technocratic thinking about human activity. Data also provide a new foundation and focus for community innovation, and new concrete possibilities for enhancing community activities, experiences, and civic participation. We present and discuss a series of community design scenarios envisioning how community data can be produced, gathered, analyzed, interpreted and used by community members to enhance community awareness and engagement, to provide new opportunities for learning and development among community members, and to increase the transparency, effectiveness and fairness of local government. Our argument is that community data can be seen as a vehicle not only for more pervasive participation in local communities but also for richer, better-grounded, and more effective participation.