CommunityPulseMiner is a web scraping and social listening project designed to support the evaluation of Local Points of Entry (LPOE) community engagement efforts by the Public Buildings Service (PBS). This repository contains tools and scripts for mining text and transcript data from social media and online public meetings. We applied this code with a specific focus on communities in Regions 1 (San Luis, AZ) and 9 (Fort Fairfield, ME).
The primary goal of this project is to identify the needs and priorities of PBS community stakeholders and to assess whether and how these stakeholders perceive their engagement with PBS is advancing those needs. Our work focuses on evaluating how best practices in community engagement, as identified by the GSA Evaluation Division, influence local perceptions and participation in PBS projects' planning and execution. This work is a collaboration between theOffice of Government-wide Policy (OGP) and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) at GSA.
The project prioritizes scraping data from platforms with free or low-cost API access, including Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook. The data spans from the initial public announcement of modernization projects to the present. Additionally, we conduct interviews with local stakeholders to guide the selection of search terms and relevant content.