TESTIMONY
Noel Hidalgo, Executive Director of BetaNYC, on Enhancing NYC's Data Analytics and Open Data Programs
1:19:32
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4 min
Noel Hidalgo highlights the need for investments in the city's data analytics and open data programs to improve efficiency and adapt to modern challenges.
- Hidalgo calls for the restoration of the open data team to pre-pandemic levels and the addition of roles focusing on civic engagement, data literacy, and engineering.
- He emphasizes the importance of modernizing government data systems and cultivating a new generation of tech-savvy leaders.
- BetaNYC's innovation apprenticeship program is cited as a model for fostering public interest technology careers.
- Hidalgo advocates for accountability in agency data management, as well as improving digital and data literacy among New Yorkers to fight misinformation.
Noel Hidalgo
1:19:32
Start.
1:19:33
I'm gonna hi.
1:19:35
My name is Noel Ydelgo, executive director of Bayat NYC.
1:19:39
Thank you for inviting us, Chair Gutierrez, and fellow council members, and great to have the council staff here.
1:19:45
Now, more than ever, the city's data analytics team and the open data program need resource to ensure that other agencies can do more with less.
1:19:53
Since into inception, the data analytics team has streamlined internal, external data sharing practices and their work has fundamentally improved people's lives.
1:20:03
We are a quarter way through the 21st century on the verge of a climate catastrophe and need to ensure that human investments that we make at this moment carry us through the middle part of the century.
1:20:14
Consumer technology systems will morph rapidly and the climate will dictate swift responses to people's needs.
1:20:21
In some, we need adaptable people who will be able to be around for quite a bit.
1:20:26
Additionally, artificial technology and machine learning tools require clean metadata.
1:20:32
We cannot build the 21st century government on the back of systems that contain poor data.
1:20:38
I am going to hurry through the opportunities and insights that I have that I've emailed to the committee.
1:20:46
So first and foremost, if we're talking about a 21st century open data team for the city.
1:20:53
We need the open data team that is currently down five people from pre pandemic levels to reestablish that those 5 roles.
1:21:02
While the mayor has lifted elements of the hiring freeze, we ask that the open and data team completely be restored to pre pandemic capacity and add 3 more people, one that's focused on civic engagement another one that's focused on data literacy and another person in engineering.
1:21:18
We need to cultivate a new generation of leadership agencies, and this is broadly across agencies, must modernize their data systems and update civil service system to ensure that we have a system that works for this decade, not the last one.
1:21:33
We need government technical talent ready to understand new technologies and ensure that agencies are not being sold snake oil.
1:21:40
We need a new generation of technical leadership that understands the value of service design, data portability, and open technologies.
1:21:47
We need to cultivate a new generation of technology leaders that can do more with less.
1:21:52
The analytics exchange, the service design forum, and the open and data ambassadors programs are 3 current examples of demonstrating this type of leadership.
1:22:01
It needs to be combined with an apprenticeship program that prepares various college students to foster a career in public interest technology.
1:22:09
Beta NYC's innovation apprenticeship program.
1:22:11
It is an example of that, and we would love to see institutional resources added to ensure that these programs grow.
1:22:18
Institutionalizing in regards to making sure that ODCs and ODAs, the open data ambassadors, are really have the resources, we would like to see those positions become full time inside of agencies.
1:22:30
So we were asking for open data coordinators and open data ambassadors to become the agency positions.
1:22:37
Can I go for a little bit longer?
1:22:39
Thank you.
1:22:39
In regards
Jennifer Gutiérrez
1:22:40
to One more minute.
Noel Hidalgo
1:22:41
One more minute.
1:22:41
Thank you.
1:22:42
In regards to accountability, it's kind of appalling to hear council members ask the open data team about 3011 data when we all know that there are agencies that are essentially juking the stats.
1:22:55
Those agencies need to be held accountable.
1:22:58
We're asking that agencies are held accountable in budget hearings.
1:23:02
And so we want to ensure that every single agency, when they come asking for the justification of money that they describe their data infrastructure, their technology infrastructure, their data management practices, they need to be held directly accountable around their foil requests.
1:23:17
And the responses.
1:23:18
It should not be up to the responsibility of the open data team to bear the burden for the rest of the city when council has the responsibility and the opportunity to be asking agencies directly.
1:23:29
When it comes to data publishing, there are 2 particular agencies that do not have their crap together.
1:23:35
The first is the Department of Education.
1:23:37
They continue to be an outlier with non standard data publishing practices, and I cannot understand Y NYPD continues to publish monthly comps that data and excel spreadsheets at the police precinct level while it doesn't publish that information to the open data portal and they have their own fancy ComStat 2.0 website where you can't really cleanly extract historical data.
1:24:00
When it comes down to digital and data literacy, we're on the verge of a transformative shift on how people interact with and incorporate information.
1:24:09
If we are not teaching New Yorkers how to look at data and to review source data, there will be prayed to misinformation, opened out a week school of data, data through design, the open data ambassadors program, and the mapping for equity are just a few fundamental tools that this government should adequately resource to increase data literacy while battling fake news and misinformation.
1:24:30
Thank you very much for this time.