A People's Data Toolkit.

[vr00n]

For every US Congressional District, aggregate open data towards answering basic questions about the state of their constituency.

This information should be centered around tax-paying constituents (you and me) but their to collect evidence about issues they care about in their locales.

In Q1 2018, your constituency had:

1. X miles of roads and bike lanes that are in Y condition. This puts your constituency at Z percentile in terms of infrastructure quality across the country.
2. Police use of Force, Crime reporting.
3. (Voter/Non-Voter) Demographics, Education, Health Stats.
4. Environmental information and indicators.
5. Financial / Economic indicators.

... so on and so forth.

[patwater]

I think also connecting successful open and public technology case studies would be most impactful. Rather than just a list of descriptive stats, think of having a case study where city X has implemented Y solution that shows Z difference in open data metrics. Then connect that to the member's city by saying that hey if you did Y solution you could have a Zish savings like city X! The Civic Analytics Network has much of this.

[vr00n]

Cool idea @patwater
The case studies can be issued by or linked to this entity the same way the Congressional Budget office performs studies.

See here: https://www.cbo.gov/topics/infrastructure-and-transportation

[patwater]

There's actually a long tradition of those sorts of grassroots study efforts. The League of Women Voters does those sorts of studies. Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Research Group is another great example. This could also build on the National Neighborhood Indicators Project. There's a lot of energy in the CfA community for brigades to take on this more sort of data-driven advocacy role. This Congressional Data Collaborative could provide infrastructure for that.

Cori Zarek at CfA has been working on this sort of compendium of case studies and would be a great collaborator. I'll add her to the thread on twitter

[patwater]

Also I wonder if this is an opportunity to use the Airbnb Knowledge repo?

[vr00n]

@patwater knowledge repo is a good conceptual outcome but its tool-creep at this stage.

I'd prefer focusing on the content and methodology using dirt simple tech. In this case, a google doc that provides AOC with evidence-based talking points.

To this end, I've drafted a data-toolkit for NY 14th using dirt simple tech.

http://bit.ly/ppls-open-data-toolkit-ny14

[vr00n]

HT to https://twitter.com/DevinBalkind & https://twitter.com/jalbertbowdenii to emphasize people focus over party focus.