Design Project: Data Governance Health Status Checks
This site presents the design process and final deliverables for the Data Governance Health Status Checks, a project for the City of Pittsburgh Data Services Team and the Design Methods Sequence courses in the MLIS program at the University of Pittsburgh.
Introduction
In 2014, the City of Pittsburgh enacted an Open Data Ordinance (ODO), which required all departments to conduct high-quality data management practices, including the creation of an Open Data Catalog; designating departmental Open Data Coordinators to update and maintain the catalog; and submitting annual Open Data Reports. The city of Pittsburgh’s Data Services Team, which is part of the Department of Innovation and Performance (I&P), is responsible for supporting data governance and management for city departments. In 2020 the Data Services Team discovered that the city is not in compliance with the 2014 Open Data Ordinance and does not have procedures for prioritizing open data publication. To work toward compliance, the city’s Data Services Team from the Department of Innovation and Performance (I&P) planned data management engagement sessions to describe and discuss data management roles, responsibilities, and coordination.
For assistance in designing sustainable data governance practices with respect to the City of Pittsburgh’s Open Data Ordinance, the Data Services Team became a partner with the Library and Information Science department at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. This meant a group of students enrolled in the Design Methods course sequence could be assigned to work with them to find and recommend solutions to their problem. Our group, DataTrackers, was assigned the task of working with the city to design Data Governance Health Status Checks to promote continuous updating of data inventories.