Open data on the well-being and safety of Ottawa residents is about to get more accessible.
Last week, staff attending the city’s community safety and well-being advisory committee presented plans to develop a new dashboard that would display data on city-wide population-based indicators.
The committee, which met June 18, is made up largely of community volunteers and includes Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Rawlson King, Barrhaven West Coun. David Hill and Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs.
Inspired by dashboards in other cities, such as one in Edmonton, staff say the data would be organized into the following areas: economic security, employment and opportunities, health and wellness, as well as social cohesion and safety.
Vinh Nguyen, Ottawa’s manager of social policy research and analytics, said the city is looking to purchase data sets from Statistics Canada and collaborate with Ottawa Public Health and the Ottawa Police Service. The city would also consider partnerships with local data collection organizations, including the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study, although staff stressed the importance of adhering to a standard of data that is city-wide and integrated with demographic information.
Among the many proposed indicators, the dashboard may cover the percentage of individuals living in food-insecure households, the unemployment rate and the percentage of people who feel safe when walking alone.
The initiative was presented as part of a performance update on the city’s community safety and well-being plan, which the advisory committee is mandated to provide feedback on. The committee is comprised of representatives from various sectors — education, health, social services — and those who offer lived experience related to its work.
Committee member Monica Armstrong, director of the Ottawa Health Team, said the city should utilize the most granular level of data that exists given the “nuances of different neighbourhoods.”
“Whenever data is available at the neighbourhood level, we want to procure that,” said Nguyen.
However, he added, “the data portal itself would be looking at more of those standard sets of data that are available.”
Committee chair Tom D’Amico, director of education with the Ottawa Catholic School Board, also suggested that the city consider enabling users to ask the dataset a question and have AI respond verbally.
“The dashboards are a great idea, but if we truly want to democratize the interpretation of data, dashboards leave some people in our communities out,” said D’Amico, who also announced he will be stepping down from his advisory position on June 30, coinciding with his professional retirement.
D’Amico said that because AI can now operate on a “data lake,” that is, a centralized repository of data, the city could set it up in a secure way that would not risk the AI “hallucinating” and generating misleading analyses.
“It would progress beyond what Edmonton is doing,” he said.
According to staff, the dashboard could be in place as early as next year.
