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<p>TACTICAL DATA ENGAGEMENT (BETA)</p>
<p>Empowering Impactful Community Use of City DataPeople to Impactfully Re-Use Open Data </p>

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<p>PT. 1</p>
<h1>INTRODUCTION</h1>
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<h2>About this guide</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of the What Works Cities project, the Sunlight Foundation (Sunlight) has worked with over 50 US City Halls to enact open data policies, and has tracked open data policy in  over 100 cities, counties, and states nationwide. We designed<strong> </strong><strong>Tactical Data Engagement</strong> to help cities go beyond simply making data <i>legally</i> or <i>technically</i> public to actually putting open data in the hands of community actors who can <i>use </i>it to advance common local goals. </p>
<p>This guide puts forth a vision for <strong>Tactical Data Engagement</strong>, an approach that seeks to connect open data programs to the radically more transparent, accountable, and participatory future of government that so many open data programs have promised. Key to unlocking that future and the central focus of Tactical Data Engagement is the idea of <i>locally specific </i>use of open data<i>, </i>or <strong>community open data use</strong>. Community use of public information carries with it the great potential to makemakes places better, specifically when residents can use open data and information to collaborate with the citiesy around solving local issues. Community actors may need public data both in its raw form and as qualitative information to have an evidence base for understanding local challenges. This guide encourages readers to ask: What can you, as a government,= do to actively facilitate opportunities for open data use in your communities? And how can governmentyou become an equal partner with residents in leveraging open data for community impact?</p>
<h3>Why did we create Tactical Data Engagement?</h3>
<p>The Sunlight Foundation believes that open data is only effective in furthering transparency and accountability when residents use it. While working We’ve worked closely with cities we’ve trackeding their best practices for engaging users around data and, in writing this guide, wanted to join those insights with actionable steps for cities to follow in pursuit of successful community use of open data. Our hope is to revolutionize the way governments think about open data as an opportunity for productive partnership and collaboration. State and local governments need strategies for interacting with communities to encourage the active use of open data. These strategies would have the potential to activate and empower community practitioners, residents, and data users to<i> </i>use city data for issues that community members <i>uniquely </i>recognize. We believe that open governments today have a rare opportunity to expand the power of open data to solve local problems.</p>
<p>In the past, Sunlight has supported many cities in developing the foundations of open data through policies and portals to promote government transparency. These efforts have fostered and proliferated <i>access</i> to government data across the nation. This access is critical democratic infrastructure. However, to fully engender openness, governments need to build upon this infrastructure of access to facilitate productive re-use of public information. Most governments, after all, undertake open data initiatives to demonstrate open data’s capacity to affect positive change. Open data policies and portals are important foundations, but it’s clear cities need to go further.</p>
<h3>Who is this guide for? </h3>
<p>The primary audience for this guide includes local government officials and administrators who want to get more than a policy and portal out of their open data program. The process steps apply to local governments that are ready to engage with stakeholder expertise to add value and create opportunities for their communities by making public data more usable. The research on city-specific government approaches in this guide should also be able to meet the needs of regional, state, or federal governments. </p>

<p>Although it was designed to guide government actors, we also hope that Tactical Data Engagement will help advocates, researchers, librarians, organizers, and residents achieve their goals by creating an avenue for governments and community organizations to work together. Those with strong roots in communities should feel free to adopt various elements of facilitating open data’s re-use from this guide, even without the involvement of city hall. This guide underscores that listening to residents is at the heart of being a transparent open government, and resident participation in government decision-making keeps government accountable. </p>
<h3>What should I do with this guide? </h3>
<p>Use the <strong><u>How-to</strong></u> section to understand the step-by-step process we’ve developed to carry out Tactical Data Engagement, paired with actionable tactics to carry out each step. As a tactical approach, Tactical Data Engagement can be used to make sure existing strategic initiatives are community oriented and grounded in data. Use the tactics to complete the process steps if you’re short on ideas.   </p>

<p>Use the <strong><u>Resources</strong></u><strong> </strong>to read about cases in cities that have used Tactical Data Engagement tactics, read a full explanation of how we developed our tactics, and do a self-assessment to gauge your data engagement environment.</p>

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<h2>What is Tactical Data Engagement?</h2>
<p><blockquote>Tactical Data Engagement is a collaborative approach that teaches governments how to facilitate the community use of open data.</blockquote></p>
<p>It’s a set of process steps developed based on concepts of human-centered design that guide governments on how to successfully engage with residents around open data to productive ends. We provide readers with tactics, drawn from examples in cities around the country, to ensure that the process steps and the approach as a whole are possible within the constraints of realistic community and government internal capacity. As opposed to seeking to an expensive, or impossible "perfect" solution, Tactical Data Engagement’s impact might be incremental and can be iterated and built upon. Thanks to Sunlight’s suggested tactics, the process can be lightweight, adaptable, incremental, inexpensive, targeted, strategic, and can be built upon.</p>
<p>The goal of the Tactical Data Engagement approach is to facilitate the community use of open  data. Community use of open data is the use of <i>locally specific </i>information to address <i>locally specific </i>issues. Community actors may need public data both in its raw form and as qualitative information to have an evidence base for understanding local challenges. We see these community challenges as opportunities for governments to consolidate interest around an issue and facilitate the community use of open data to address that issue. </p>
<p><i>… and why should I use </i><i>it</i><i>?</i></p>
<p>It’s important for city halls and government agencies at all levels to have a firm grasp on the value-add that Tactical Data Engagement provides. Tactical Data Engagement as an approach has the potential to take <i>your </i>open data program to the next level. This approach can help governments that have various elements of an open data program, but are still searching for ways to generate impact and success stories in communities. The process steps that make up the approach are lightweight and adaptable. They can take conversations and ideas that may have circulated in your government’s offices and turn them into a solidified effort with opportunities for iteration and sustainability. This approach will help you reveal and leverage the impact of existing activities in your city. </p>



















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<p>PT. 2</p>
<h1>HOW-TO: PROCESS & TACTICS</h1>
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<p>Navigating the process of Tactical Data Engagement...</p>
<p>Below we walk you through the steps of the Tactical Data Engagement process and how you can use them. We intend for these steps to sound familiar if your organization has strategies in place for community engagement or data partnerships in the community. The steps should add another layer of integrity to your strategic efforts by ensuring that open data plays a part in collaborations outside of government, and that data-driven projects incorporate the real needs of residents, specifically when projects aim to address issues predominant in disadvantaged communities. These steps, and the approach as a whole, demonstrate how to facilitate the effective community use of open data, and should lead you to empower community members across industries and backgrounds to participate in local decision-making. </p>
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<h2>Find opportunities for community use of data.</h2>
<p>THE ACTIONDEFINITION: Listening to any existing or new channel through whichwhere public stakeholders, partners, or contractors demonstrate that open data could help them achieve their goalsto do their jobs better. </p>
<p>THE DESCRIPTION: Listening to stakeholders is a universally good practice, and there are a number of existing guides on how stakeholder mapping and knowing your audience fit into that practice. Some of these ways to listen for opportunities may resemble things you’re already doing, for example if you surveying residents, maintaininghave relationships with trusted/anchor organizations in the community, or regularly conveninge groups of subject matter experts. Listening for opportunities to generate impact in your community should help you identify one specific opportunity to pursue that would increase the public re-use of government data. After collecting initial thoughts and suggestions from partners and stakeholders, the decision about which focus area holds the most promise for public data’s use may be internal. However, decisions about potential improvements to a community should include the perspectives of members of that community, especially where development efforts in disenfranchised neighborhoods are concerned. Each of the tactics we’ve developed to help carry out this stage involves listening and drilling down to what community stakeholders really need. </p>
<p>THE RESULT: A <strong>focus area</strong><i><strong> </i></strong>where feedback from community members suggests that there are a variety of specific challenges that might benefit from the targeted use of open data. </p>
<h3>Suggested tactics for <strong>finding </strong>opportunities for community data use: </h3>
<p><strong>TACTIC</strong></p><p><strong>DESCRIPTION</strong></p><p><strong>EXAMPLE</strong></p><p>Identify shared priorities</p><p>Look for organizations or stakeholders in the community that share one or more strategic priorities with your agency. Reach out to those stakeholders and determine whether there is strategic alignment. Consider choosing a focus area where multiple partners are aligned over similar strategic priorities. </p><p>Analyze data requests</p><p>Analyze any formal or informal channels where residents or data users submitted requests for data, information, files, or services. Choose a focus area based on where requests are most concentrated and where there is most opportunity to engage residents around improvements to the request system. </p><p>Identify most valuable partners</p><p>Look for partners with whom your agency has contracts, data sharing agreements, or other similar trusted relationships, for example, partners who receive government grants. Issues of importance to these partners may be impactful focus areas. </p><p>Observe popular meetings</p><p>Attend meetings where many, varied residents attend to voice their concerns. Listen to general concerns and classify them into a focus area. If any focus areas exposed by resident concerns fall under city strategic initiatives, commit to those as your focus area.</p><p>Map similar places’ issues</p><p>Make a list of agencies with similar demographic, economic, or geographic issues, perhaps by looking at other governments in your region. Study which focus areas those agencies are working on and whether you can either partner or replicate their solutions. Focus areas with a critical mass of support across related places might be impactful to focus on. Note: Using this tactic means you’ll have to ensure that focus areas important in similar places are also important to your community’s residents. </p>

<h2>Refine promising opportunities for community data use.</h2>
<p>THE DEFINITION: Narrowing in on a couple of potentially impactful ideas for collaboration with residents that would facilitate the use of open data. </p>
<p>THE DESCRIPTION: This step requires doing deeper research into your chosen focus area, and determining where there is an impactful opportunity to share and leverage open data. Think about the opportunities surfaced in the previous Finding step that fall within your desired focus area, and whether any single opportunity has more potential than the others to leverage data in a way that solves a specific locally important issue. Opportunities with strong players involved, strong resident interest, or obviously relevant gaps in information or data might be good candidates to move forward with Tactical Data Engagement. </p>
<p>Refining a specific opportunity based on specific community feedback is what differentiates a general strategic priority from a community-driven priority. This part is particularly important: Communities that have systematically been underrepresented in decision-making should have a seat at the table to inform city efforts. Specifically, communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities are often most deeply affected by any issues that cities may hope to address. When framing a specific scenario with potential impact in the community, you should consider having direct and focused conversations with members of these or other communities with particular insight into your local issue area. Doing so ensures that any solutions generated by the Tactical Data Engagement approach actually meet community needs. </p>
<p>THE RESULT: A refined <strong>opportunity statement</strong> that includes who will be using public data, which data they’ll be using, what they’d like to do with the data, and to what end. </p>

<h3>Suggested tactics for <strong>refining </strong>opportunities for community data use: </h3>
<p><strong>TACTIC</strong></p><p><strong>DESCRIPTION</strong></p><p><strong>EXAMPLE</strong></p><p>Interview stakeholders individually</p><p>Set up calls, cold call, survey, and interview individuals who have interacted with the city around your chosen focus area. Individuals with relevant perspectives may include individuals who requested data (about your chosen issue), who work in relevant fields, who commonly interact with services, or who issues in your focus area most greatly affect. Ask them which issues are most important within your chosen focus area. Use their feedback to determine how data might play a role in collaboratively addressing their issues. </p><p>Host scope-a-thons</p><p>Host an event where local nonprofits, researchers, civic hackers, government officials, journalists, and other stakeholders can gather to brainstorm what the most pertinent issues are within your chosen focus area. The event should be an opportunity to scope specific community members’ needs and how they might be resolved using open data. The result should be a collaboratively generated opportunity statement.  </p><p>Consult local experts</p><p>Convene a roundtable with local experts to generate ideas for which issues within your focus area might be most pressing or feasible to address with data. Leverage local expertise and research knowledge to find how data can fit into solutions for residents. Attempt to include as wide a range of voices as possible. </p><p>Raise opportunity at meetings</p><p>Attend meetings or plan a community meeting where many, varied residents attend to voice their concerns. Get on the agenda to present your agency’s commitment to your focus area and field feedback on specific issues that fall within that focus area. Conduct low-tech, digital, verbal, or physical exercises and try to tailor activities to a wide range of experience levels. Data walks or other hands-on activities could help residents express specific issues within a focus area. </p><p>Workshop with partners</p><p>Gather your trusted partners and brainstorm ways that each partner can reach out to their own community network and assess what specific issues within your focus area might benefit from the use of open data. Host workshops to come up with a specific opportunity statement based on expressed community needs.</p>

<h2>Plan together with community members.</h2>
<p>THE DEFINITION: Narrowing down a realistic plan either alongside residents or involving key members of the community. </p>
<p><i>*</i><i>Note: You are not carrying out an intervention in this step, but rather putting together the specifics of the plan that you will carry out. </i><i>You will need to know the action tactics and plan ahead accordingly if you plan to carry out an action tactic.</i></p>

<p>THE DESCRIPTION: Collaborative planning with communities is a tool that many cities and governments already use to solicit feedback, for example planning departments might ask for feedback on a city’s comprehensive plan, Congress might ask for feedback on a policy plan, or housing agencies might ask for input when planning new real estate developments. Planning alongside members of the community entails bringing a draft plan while remaining open to input and establishing that feedback from residents will be incorporated into plans. In the context of Tactical Data Engagement, a plan that hasn’t been reviewed by residents is more likely to be ineffective. </p>

<p>Generating a draft plan in the first place, may be an original process unique to your organization, or may build off of open plans from other cities that address similar opportunities as your chosen opportunity. Once you have a draft, there are a number of tactics to get it out in the open (including those suggested below). Be mindful of the audience from whom you would like to solicit feedback. In groups with varied skills and backgrounds, low-tech solutions often work best, for example doing physical activities with note cards, sticky notes, or markers to solicit detailed notes on your proposed plan rather than relying on data expertise. </p>

<p>THE RESULT: A <strong>community-approved plan</strong> that confirms general information like who is involved in the plan and which data they’ll use and to what end, as well as general logistical details like roles, timelines, funding, and goals.  </p>

<h3>Suggested tactics for <strong>planning </strong>with communities to use data: </h3>
<p><strong>TACTIC</strong></p><p><strong>DESCRIPTION</strong></p><p><strong>EXAMPLE</strong></p><p>Solicit feedback online</p><p>Using crowdlaw, or crowdsourcing policy feedback, as a model, post your opportunity statement online as well as a draft plan. Develop an extensive communications plan in coordination with in-person promotion events to ensure that the draft plan reaches a wide variety of audiences. Solicit comments on the plan through digital tools.   </p><p>Hold expert focus groups</p><p>Convene a roundtable with local experts to generate input on whether roles, timelines, and activities are appropriate for your desired outcomes. Invite local researchers or practitioners to comment on a draft plan or collaboratively draft an action plan based on their experience in the field. Solicit in-person, detailed input pertaining to subject matter and feasibility of your desired outcomes.</p><p>Host public planning workshop </p><p>Invite the public to a community meeting where the main activity will include a low-tech engagement activity like note card sorting, diagramming, or collecting sticky note feedback on how your agency should proceed with addressing your specific opportunity for community data use. Commit to implementing feedback gathered at public meetings and express next steps. </p>

<h2>Implement action plan around specific opportunities.</h2>
<p>THE DEFINITION: Taking action after communicating the opportunity for collaboration to relevant community stakeholders and organizations. </p>

<p>THE DESCRIPTION: Each of the tactics we’ve developed to help carry out this step is centered around an effort that requires active stakeholder engagement with city data around an identified opportunity. At this stage in the Tactical Data Engagement process, government staff should be prepared to provide new data, assist with resources, assist with implementation, create a new product, or implement a community-created product. In the most straightforward cases, the opportunity to facilitate re-use may mean sharing datasets that are not currently available in formats and with contents that best suit the needs of the requesters to solve local issues. Alternatively, the opportunity could involve helping community residents access data about their interactions with the city — for example, connecting local business owners with more accessible permitting and zoning information to drive economic development, or helping parents better understand school options by providing data-driven neighborhood context to improve education outcomes. If your project is aimed at building a new high-tech or low-tech tool, commit to iterative user testing throughout the process. It’s important to take into account that the first solution may not always be the best one and that those members of the community who contributed to the ideation of this project have valuable insight into any product’s usability. </p>

<p>The crux of this step is realizing that an intervention that helps community members better use open data will not instantaneously improve issues like blight or education, but rather that a more community-informed and more data-driven approach to problem-solving will move the needle on these issues in the long-run. </p>

<p>THE RESULT: A <strong>product, tool, or completed project</strong> where community members were able to use new open data or use existing public data in a new way thanks to intervention by and partnership with governments or data providers. </p>

<h3>Suggested tactics for <strong>implementing </strong>plans for community data use: </h3>
<p><strong>TACTIC</strong></p><p><strong>DESCRIPTION</strong></p><p><strong>EXAMPLE</strong></p><p>Create low-tech data products</p><p>Build a new solution that meets people in physical places. Shying away from online tools or digital solutions that are difficult for everyday people to use, build something that connects residents’ real life experiences to data. Create a new way for residents to access or use data that is not high-tech.</p><p>Invite intermediaries to improve data utility </p><p>Empower data intermediaries in your community to access relevant data and process it to be the most usable for residents who need it. Data intermediaries can be local research organizations or nonprofits that regularly warehouse and process data with community needs in mind. Address your opportunity statement by getting the right data to specific stakeholders after a data intermediary has processed and joined with contextual data if needed. This tactic requires that data intermediary partners lead or manage a significant portion of the action.</p><p>Co-create with civic hackers</p><p>Contact and coordinate with local civic hackers. Collaborate with them either by allowing them access to new relevant datasets or open source code. This tactic is best for agencies with internal tech capacity that can contribute to collaboration and with capacity to implement and maintain co-created solutions in the long-term. </p><p>Crowdsource data quality improvement</p><p>Improve a dataset by asking members of the community and stakeholders to check the data points and offer contributions. Poor quality data sets don’t sufficiently illuminate local issues, and in many cases, residents could provide qualitative information that would help cities better solve problems. Crowdsourcing data improvements could be done digitally or in-person through workshops or events. </p><p>Host a data challenge </p><p>Release a new data set and develop a communications strategy to encourage widespread participation in a data challenge. Establish specific avenues for support and implementation of a winning idea that uses the new data set to solve an issue in the community. Commit to measuring the impact and iterating upon the community-sourced idea. Encourage participation across industries, not limited to civic hackers, with opportunities for those without data and tech expertise to participate.</p>






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<p><i>(Kristina Alexanderson/</i><i><u>Flickr</i></u><i>)</i></p>








<p>Appendix</p>
<h1>RESOURCES</h1>
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<h2>Cases of TDE in Practice</h2>
<p>Write up something about cases. Each case demonstrates a couple of tactics or a mish-mash because real life is messy. </p>
<h2>A Guide to Using TDE Tactics</h2>
<p>Write up something about the full menu of tactics, still separated by step but with more information.</p>
<h2>A Finding and Framing Activity</h2>
<p>In May 2017 in Scottsdale, AZ, Sunlight led a Tactical Data Engagement activity to help city officials think through the Finding and Framing stage of identiftying opportunities for open data’s re-use. We challenged them to focus in on specific issue areas and identify people or organizations who might be essentially to best leveraging their city’s data supply in order to generate impact for specific communities. Then, we challenged attendees to ask themselves how the city would could continue using Tactical Data Engagement as an approach to address a variety of issues as they rose in importance to communities in the future. To do this activity on your own, <u>see the form here</u>. </p>
<h2>Sunlight’s TDE Pilot Cities</h2>
<p>Can we have a page on the website to track/write-up pilots? </p>