Visualization tools for Open Government Data
24
Visualization tools for Open Government Data Alvaro Graves and James Hendler @alvarograves - @jahendler [email protected] - [email protected] Tetherless World Constellation Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1 Saturday, June 22, 13
-
Upload
alvaro-graves -
Category
Technology
-
view
1.308 -
download
3
description
In recent years many government organizations have imple- mented Open Government Data (OGD) policies to make their data publicly available. This data usually covers a broad set of domains, from financial to ecological informa- tion. While these initiatives often report anecdotal success regarding improved efficiency and governmental savings, the potential applications of OGD remain a largely uncharted territory. In this paper, we claim that there is an important portion of the population who could benefit from the use of OGD, but who cannot do so because they cannot perform the essential operations needed to collect, process, merge, and make sense of the data. The reasons behind these prob- lems are multiple, the most critical one being a fundamental lack of expertise and technical knowledge. We propose the use of visualizations as a way to alleviate this situation. Vi- sualizations provide a simple mechanism to understand and communicate large amounts of data. We also show evidence that there is a need for exploratory mechanisms to navigate the data and metadata in these visualizations. Finally, we provide a discussion on a set of features that tools should have in order to facilitate the creation of visualizations by users. We briefly present the implementation of these features in a new tool prototype focused on simplifying the creation of visualization based on Open Data.
Transcript of Visualization tools for Open Government Data
Visualization tools for Open Government Data
Alvaro Graves and James Hendler@alvarograves - @jahendler
[email protected] - [email protected] World ConstellationRensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1
Saturday, June 22, 13
Agenda
• Challenges for Open Government Data
• Identifying stakeholders
• Soluition developed
• Conclusions
2
Saturday, June 22, 13
Challenges for Open Government Data
3
Saturday, June 22, 13
Open Data is everywhere!
• Over 1.000.000 datasets from national and local governments
• Lots of information about education, health, budgets, transportation, etc.
4
Saturday, June 22, 13
Available ≠ Usable
• Although data can be accessed by many people, few can use them
• For many tasks, data manipulation requires knowledge in programming, statistics, etc.
5
Saturday, June 22, 13
Challenge
6
• What is needed for non-technical users to consume and explore Open Government Data?
• How can we empower domain experts that lack experience with Data?
Idea:Use of visualizations can
make easier for people to consume data
Saturday, June 22, 13
Why Visualizations?
• Visual inspection of data is helpful
• It is easy to share and consume for non data experts
• Can help to detect trends and outliers
7
Anscombe’s quartet
“Attractions in Berlin”
Saturday, June 22, 13
Identifyingstakeholders
8
Saturday, June 22, 13
Usage survey
• Asked information about what type of data and how they use it
• Survey via social media
• Do you use visualizations?
• How important are certain features of visualizations?
9
Saturday, June 22, 13
Results
10
Saturday, June 22, 13
Results
11
Saturday, June 22, 13
12
Results
Saturday, June 22, 13
Results
13
Saturday, June 22, 13
Interviews
• We know there is a need, but who are the stakeholders of Open Government Data?
• 12 interviews with journalists, sociologists, engineers, etc.
• Based on these interviews, we created a series of Personas which represent different groups of people
14
Saturday, June 22, 13
Five profiles
• Government data provider
• Government data consumer
• Researcher/Journalist
• Civil programmer
• Citizen
15
Focus on the first three.
Saturday, June 22, 13
Problem grouping
• Exploration
• Provenance and metadata questions
•Creation
• How to create a visualization?
•Repurposing
• How to reuse someone else’s visualization16
We grouped the problems described during the interviews based on several criteria
Saturday, June 22, 13
Solution developed
17
Saturday, June 22, 13
Back to the first question....• How can we empower citizens that are experts in certain
areas but lack experience with data?
• Tools that:
• Facilitate creation of visualizations
• Provide better exploratory mechanisms
• Ease sharing and viralization
• Allow repurposing of visualizations
18
Saturday, June 22, 13
Facilitate creation of visualizations
• I want a tool where I can create a visualization in, say, no more than 6 steps
• Need some rapid prototyping techniques so user can obtain immediate feedback
19
Saturday, June 22, 13
Better exploratory mechanisms
• Visualization by itself is not enough!
• Provide ways to understand how the visualizations was processed
• Provide mechanism to obtain the URL of the data used, when it was downloaded, etc.
20
Saturday, June 22, 13
Ease sharing and viralization
• Facilitate communication between Data Providers and Data Consumers
• Visualizations should be easy to share via the media people use more often
21
Saturday, June 22, 13
Allow repurpose of visualizations
• Do not force users to start from scratch!
• Critical for Government Data Consumers
• Useful for exploring different approaches to visualizations
22
Saturday, June 22, 13
Prototype• Facilitates the creation
of visualizations based on OGD
• Records and exposes provenance automatically
• Permits sharing and repurposing of visualizations
23
Saturday, June 22, 13
Conclusions
• We need better tools for OGD
• Visualizations are key in understanding OGD without special training
• By identifying the needs and limitations of stakeholders, we can build such tools
[email protected] @alvarogravesSaturday, June 22, 13
