The California Community Foundation invites you to submit proposals for the website design and initial implementation of Los Angeles County’s new Social Change Data Commons. Your organization was selected based on its experience and qualifications, and we look forward to hearing your ideas on how to implement our vision for data and social change in L.A. County.
We are: an exciting new project born out of the 100-year experience and expertise of the California Community Foundation. We know a lot about philanthropy, L.A. County and its diverse communities. We have been learning about data and its potential to create social change and we want to create the right tools to help make that change happen. We don’t have all the answers but we’re excited to figure them out as we go!
You are: an innovative and civically minded web design agency, working to solve complex problems and create change in your community. You know a lot about data, flexible design and community building. You bring answers to our questions, but also many of your own questions to help us build the right tools. Most importantly, you share our vision for using open data to create social change in L.A. County.
Criteria for Selection (preference will be given to proposals which can demonstrate the following)
| CCF preferred | SCDC preferred |
|---|---|
| Woman-owned | Open-source |
| Minority-owned | Open Data |
| Small business | Civically minded |
| Los Angeles based | Familiar with L.A. County landscape |
1. The Problem – The hidden needs of L.A. County
L.A. County is spread over more than 4,000 sq. miles, and is home to over 10 million residents, spread between 88 cities and 81 different school districts. It is a maze of bureaucracy, with hundreds of disconnected, overlapping, and sometimes competing agencies working for Angelenos. Although we know that close to 20% of L.A. County residents live in poverty, the actual needs of our communities are poorly understood.
As a result, information about pressing issues such as demographic data, poverty statistics, educational needs, sub-ethnicities, and housing and health care scarcity is hidden—masked by the aggregate data of a huge population.
Over recent years, there has been an effort to improve access to public data. While there is an increasing amount of public open data available throughout the region, it is often of poor quality, and can be very hard to find, even for seasoned data researchers and social change advocates. It is not open enough, not interoperable, transparent or standardized enough.
Like the county itself, data about L.A. is potentially vibrant and rich, yet hampered by a lack of overall planning and centralized resources. The result is that major needs go untreated, promising solutions are overlooked and those with the greatest ability to help focus their efforts elsewhere.
Angelenos are aware of the issues and suffering facing L.A. County. They see it every day around them, yet when it comes to doing something about it, they do not know where to turn and what to do. A recent CCF, USC Dornsife and LA Times poll found that 80% of L.A. County residents are willing to increase their community involvement, but 40% say they don’t know what they can do to help or if it will make a difference.
The rising profile of public open data as a tool for social change and government, in LA and elsewhere, creates an opportunity for a new type of solution, that combines access to good quality, standardized open data with impactful storytelling about the real unmet needs of L.A. County’s most vulnerable communities.
Through the SCDC, we will chart the future of Los Angeles by telling its stories to all that can help create change, and we will find those stories in the numbers that describe and define the lives of Angelenos.
SCDC is a different kind of data project, one that combines data access with powerful multimedia storytelling and advocacy to create positive social impact. Its purpose is twofold:- to harness the power of open data to create a more equitable future for L.A. County’s most vulnerable and underserved communities, and
- to encourage the creation and adoption of a gold standard for public open data.
To do so, it will create an online resource promoting access to L.A. County’s open data (the Public Library), and to real, detailed stories of L.A. County (the Gateway blog). Users of these platforms will gather and generate insight into the challenges and solutions facing vulnerable populations in the region, as well as into the condition and availability of open data. This insight in turn will promote and encourage the adoption of better open data standards, and will help to foster change by giving philanthropic funders, donors and policymakers the tools to make better decisions for the future of L.A. County.
The SCDC will be the first regional, online public library of civic data and social change. As a central hub and champion for open civic data in L.A. County, it will harness the untapped potential of existing data resources and the talent and passion of data and social change advocates.
It will allow people who understand the power of data and who seek to create social change in L.A. County to discover and analyze data sets, sources and resources; uncover connections and gaps in the available data; tell the stories behind it; share and discuss new data analyses, sources and opportunities; and inspire collaboration and advocacy to address L.A.’s most pressing challenges.
The project will unfold in two phases:
Phase One
The first phase of SCDC will launch in the summer of 2017 and will include the following elements:
- A blog for users to browse and share original content telling the stories of L.A. County’s most vulnerable communities and highlighting the most innovative and relevant solutions to those challenges, based on available data. Content will include:
- user-created content drawing from the Public Library of data,
- original pieces from data-journalists and researchers,
- curated external web content on L.A. data and needs.
The blog will be accessed through a Gateway which will also provide an overview of SCDC and an intuitive navigation tool linked to the other sections of the site.
- The Public Library of L.A. Data will be a central aggregator, curator and steward of links to and information about existing and emerging open data sets and sources for L.A. County. Users will explore a large library of data sources that will be structured by standard metadata standards—a library that will be searchable and easily navigable using broad categories (e.g. health, education or public safety) or specific tags, as well as usable for comparison across portals. Rather than hosting datasets on the site, the library will provide links to the data at their original sources, ensuring the most up-to-date available data. SCDC staff will add new sets, sources and resources as they become available. (Current Data Inventory can be accessed at https://github.com/compilerla/los-angeles-data-sources)
Both elements will include an interactive community interface, allowing users to discuss data resources, content and issues, as well as ask and answer questions. We are looking to create an engaged community of users, who will use the site as a launchpad to share and advocate for solutions to the challenges faced by L.A. County’s most vulnerable communities.
In the fall of 2017, a mini-suite will be launched hosting the Los Angeles Human Development Index (LAHDI). Compiled and created by Measure of America (MoA), it will provide a detailed look at the well-being of L.A. County residents, based on the UN Human Development Index. It will be co-branded by SCDC and MoA.
The pages will contain customized analyses and visualizations designed to give viewers a detailed understanding of the issues affecting the day-to-day lives of Angelenos. It will also provide users with an introduction to and overview of Los Angeles using a detailed set of visualizations and content focused on the Los Angeles Human Development Index.
Phase Two
In its second phase, SCDC will launch its signature, community-driven forum, which will allow users to connect, share and work together to drive social change and to advance open data in L.A. County.
- The Data Commons will be a public “maker space” that will capture the untapped civic engagement, potential and talent of users that have extraordinary ideas. It will be an empowering arena in which civic data users and advocates can share new data and/or generate new analyses by connecting and combining datasets in new and innovative ways. Users will explore a series of online communities centered around key areas of need in L.A. County (e.g. health, education, housing, economic opportunity and others); post questions, comments, link to new data sources and other relevant content; share data sets to be considered for inclusion in the Library of Data; and share, discuss, debate and collaborate to advocate for change on major issues affecting L.A. County.
The key features we expect include a blog, support for d3.js visualizations throughout the site including blog, robust searching capabilities, ability to add and manage custom ontology, multiple user types, staff portal for administrative approvals of submitted content, and comments. We also expect to be able to consume specific content for the data library via API, for example, consuming metadata from an instance of the Socrata open data portal.
One of the key components of the SCDC will be to promote a gold standard for open data. As such, we are committed to enforcing a clearly defined and easily followed minimum inclusion criteria for data. For data publishers seeking inclusion in the SCDC Data Library, the following minimum requirements must be met:- Dataset must be available online in an open and accessible way.
- Dataset must be available in a machine readable format.
- Dataset documentation must comply with the minimum metadata requirements.
Data included in SCDC will meet the standard minimum inclusion criteria fields listed in the W3C Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) metadata standard, which was chosen for SCDC as it already forms the basis of the Project Open Data Metadata Schema v1.1 that was developed and adopted by the US Federal data.gov platform. Common adoption of metadata standards will facilitate comparison and federation of records across data portals.
For more details, see appendices below:
- Minimum data requirements – Appendix 3
- Metadata fields – Appendix 4
- Current list of categories curated – Appendix 5
- Dataset example – Appendix 6.
Data Storytelling
The following sites reflect the vision we have for the stories SCDC would inspire, enable and publish:
- Chicago's Million Dollar Blocks – http://chicagosmilliondollarblocks.com/
- Motor City Mapping – https://www.motorcitymapping.org/
- New York Times Article – Affluent and Black, and Still Trapped by Segregation
- Officer Involved - http://projects.scpr.org/officer-involved/
The following elements, as included in some or all of the stories, are particular relevant to our project:
- data-driven
- contextual narrative or story
- clear call to action
- quickly and easily readable
- relevant data visualization(s)
- referencing to raw data and/or methodologies.
Similar sites
The following sites are a more direct reflection of what we envision the SCDC to be. In particular, the sites’ functionalities are a good illustration of the type of community engagement that we want to promote, although it has a different scope/focus.
- Community Commons - https://www.communitycommons.org/
- Net Data Directory - http://netdatadirectory.org/
Different audience groups will access SCDC in different ways: while data advocates will typically use the Library of Data as a point of access for research, decision makers and donors will likely primarily use the Gateway and the blog as a source of information when making policy or funding decisions.
Key User Profiles
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Data Journalists | Print, radio or online journalist focusing on data analysis as a source for writing or contributing to news stories about L.A. County. |
| Data Researchers | Academic researcher using data analysis as part of her research tools, often in the fields of social or human sciences. |
| Civic Tech Activists | Civically engaged individual working in tech-related fields, familiar with data and willing to use their skills for social change. |
| Policymakers | L.A. County and government employees with the authority to make policy decisions affecting Angelenos. Varying degrees of familiarity with data, but a willingness to tackle L.A. County’s challenges effectively. |
| Service Providers | Nonprofit or government social service providers based in L.A. County, willing to learn more about the needs of the population they serve. |
| Social Activists | Organizations working towards social justice and social change, conducting research and creating campaigns to affect policy decisions. |
| Foundations | Philanthropic organizations looking for new and more efficient ways to donate and carry out their mission in L.A. County. |
| Individual Donors | Generous individuals looking to donate money and make a real difference in L.A. County. |
Although the project in its initial phase will focus on users who are already in some way engaged in data and/or social change, our vision is to ultimately empower the broader community to become aware and engaged to the challenges L.A. County faces, and how they can help address them through charitable giving and innovation.
The success of SCDC will ultimately relate to its twin objectives: using open data for advocacy, and advocating for access to open data. Success will therefore be measured in two ways:- by how successfully it is adopted and used to drive investment in and attention to pressing issues facing L.A. County residents, and
- by how it helps increase the quality and quantity of open data in Los Angeles County and beyond.
At this stage, this RFP is to deliver Phase 1, although we expect and encourage Phase 2 requirements to be taken into consideration when designing the proposal.
Proposals should include the following:
- Applicant profile outlining the team that will work on the project, qualifications and relevant past work. Please include:
- A detailed presentation of the individual team members who will be working on this project (Collaborative proposals with other parties are accepted and encouraged if you feel that they would help you better fulfill the requirements of the project!);
- 2 or 3 specific examples of past projects and highlight specific features that you believe are relevant to this proposal;
- Any details of the following preferred technical qualifications
- familiarity and/or experience with the open data movement,
- experience using open source software development practices,
- experience using d3 methodology,
- familiarity with the L.A. County political and social landscape.
- A narrative proposal detailing your understanding of the project and your vision for its implementation. We want to know how your mission and purpose align with ours, and also if we’ve missed anything!
- An illustration of your team’s design process for this project, and in particular:
- _What questions you would seek to answer in the initial stages?_
- _How you would go about answering them?_
- _How would you build a technical platform that facilitates community from a broad base of users?_
- A detailed budget and timeline estimate for phase one of the project, ideally to be completed within 12 weeks of contract finalization.
Timeline
| event | date |
|---|---|
| RFP issued | December 16, 2016 |
| Initial responses and questions | December 19 – December 23 2016 |
| Proposals submission | January 3 – January 22 2017 |
| Review of proposals, Interviews / Presentations | January 23 – January 31 2017 |
| Final decision | Early February 2017 |
The following description of site functionality is based on interviews with data advocates in our community. Using a human-centered design and an agile approach, CCF expects that the priority and implementation of these features will change once a specific vendor is engaged.
- Core functionality – Design new or generalize existing open source platform to implement the following features:
- Gateway
- Blog
- Implementation of site-wide taxonomy
- Public Library of L.A. Data
- Views of all/many datasets at once, ability to search or organize by metadata fields
- Auto-generated unique pages for each dataset.
- The library will not host raw data, but will display metadata for a particular dataset and point to the authoritative source elsewhere
- See Appendix 4 for metadata fields to be displayed
- Comments on each dataset (potentially Disqus)
- Workflow for submission and review of new datasets to library
- Representation and ability to navigate site based on relationships amongst Users, Organizations, and Datasets
- Integration with specific open data portals. This may be by consuming specific content for the data library via API, for example consuming metadata from an instance of a Socrata, OpenGov, or Junar open data portal.
- Data Commons (Phase II)
- Members/Users Directory
- Data projects – These are objects that are created by users or nonusers that are related to a particular dataset
- For example: a report on graduation rates of young men of color in LAUSD is related to the dataset “LAUSD Graduation Rates”
- Representation and ability to navigate site based on relationships amongst Users, Organizations, Datasets, Data Projects, and Blog Posts
- Forum or robust commenting system – Allow users to communicate based on items in commons and/or independent topics (e.g. Coral Project Talk or Discourse)
- Develop open source documentation to support deployment of software in new cities
- Develop white label documentation to adapt the styling and configuration to new cities
- Publish to GitHub
- Create design resources necessary for launch of site
- May include page layouts, style guides and some branding resources.
- Using agile methodologies, design review is expected to go through:
- Two rounds of wireframes
- Two rounds of mockups
- Users – estimated that we will need three or four levels of users with differing permission types
- Owner/Administrator
- Editor – staff or high level volunteers responsible to reviewing and approving content (this may be one or two types)
- General User Site – visitors who wish to save work, and or submit content for broader publication
- Accessibility:
- Compliance with [State of California guidelines](https://webtools.ca.gov/web-content/web-accessibility/state-accessibility-standards/), able to use common screen readers
- Internationalization
- CMS should be designed for internationalization
- With 54% of Angelenos not speaking English at home we expect to release multiple translations of the site with partners in future iterations
- Code
- All code for site should be hosted publically on the GitHub platform
- Open Source
- All materials, both code and documentation, generated for this project should be licensed under an MIT license.
- Hosting
- To be determined at future date
- Analytics
- Google Analytics enabled throughout site
- Maintenance
- Expected the vendor selected perform maintenance for 12 months at a flat rate, which includes the following:
- Ensure application uptime
- Monitor traffic, and take measures to handle unusual loads
- Fix any bugs that arise
- Ensure proper functioning of the application
- Answer technical questions and offer help regarding the nature of the software and its inherent logic
- Offer strategic advice on future changes and development
- The vendor is not expected to:
- Train site users on how to use the software
- Offer product support for site users
- Build new or substantially modify existing features.
We define “open data” as data that individuals and organizations make publicly available for use and/or redistribution without legal, technological or social restrictions. “Open data standards” are publicly available guidelines to improve data quality, accessibility and interoperability. Open data publishers do not require user information or payment; they do not implement restricted use cases or noncommercial clauses.
For data publishers seeking inclusion in the SCDC Data Library, the following minimum requirements must be met:
- Dataset must be available online in an open and accessible way.
- Dataset must be available in a machine readable format.
- Dataset documentation must comply with the minimum metadata requirements.
| label | description |
|---|---|
| curatedCollection | Collections were developed for CCF, following requested thematic topics and existing focus areas. See Appendix 5 - Data Categories for the current list Note: At a future data this field will meet requirements for optional “theme” adopted by USPRO and DCAT. |
| Title | A name given to the dataset by its publisher. |
| Description | A free-text account of the dataset. This long form description should discuss what to expect when using the data, and include data collection methods, and/or methodologies for calculating values if applicable. If dataset values are calculated using other data sources, those individual data sources should be listed here. Note: Many publishers include descriptions of the datasets they publish. If publishers do not provide descriptions, or if site curators think users may benefit from additional details, descriptions provided by publishers should be clearly differentiated from supplemental SCDC descriptions. Curators may also use this field to encourage new analysis, outline potential projects/applications of a dataset. |
| keyword | A keyword or tag describing the dataset. Note: These tags are used for taxonomy and indexing. Each dataset will have the same maximum number of keywords. Subject area tags also permit the categorization of one dataset as pertinent to multiple areas, such as both education and health. To be ultimately applied via a Machine Aided Indexing (MAI) program. |
| modified | Most recent date on which the dataset was changed, updated or modified. |
| publisher | An entity responsible for making the dataset available (may not be responsible for collecting the data). |
| contactPoint | All relevant contact information (including name and email) for the person(s) to whom questions about the dataset should be sent. |
| identifier** | A unique identifier of the dataset. |
| accessLevel | The degree to which this dataset may be made publicly-available, regardless of whether it has been made available. Choices: public (Data asset is or could be made publicly available to all without restrictions), restricted public (Data asset is available under certain use restrictions), or non-public (Data asset is not available to members of the public) |
| license | This links to the license document under which the distribution is made available. |
| rights | Information about rights held in and over the distribution. |
| spatial** | Spatial coverage of the dataset. |
| spatialGranularity** | Sub field of spatial coverage, required where applicable. |
| temporal** | The temporal period that the dataset covers. |
| distribution | Available distributions, or specific data formats (ex: csv, Socrata API) Note: As dcat:Distribution updates so frequently, in particular with datasets hosted using third party tools, this class is listed as a property of dcat:Dataset, after launch dcat:Distribution will be maintained. |
| distribution fields (url, etc) | URL of most commonly accessed distribution. Note: As dcat:Distribution updates so frequently, in particular with datasets hosted using third party tools, this class is listed as a property of dcat:Dataset, after launch dcat:Distribution will be maintained. |
| accrualPeriodicity | The frequency at which dataset is published. |
| reportsTo | All legislation that requires or informs the collection and reporting of these data points. |
| collectionProtocol | Description of the frequency and mode of data collection (different from periodicity of dataset publication). Links to original data collection plan or proposals may also be added here. |
| conformsTo | Data standard dataset meets. |
| describedBy | Machine readable documentation (typically used for APIs) |
| describedByType | Machine readable documentation type (typically used for APIs) |
| isPartOf | The collection of which the dataset is a subset. |
| issued | Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the dataset. |
| language | The language of the dataset. |
| landingPage | A Web page that can be navigated to in a Web browser to gain access to the dataset, its distributions and/or additional information. |
| fundedBy** | All groups and/or individuals that financially support the collection of this dataset. These entities may be the same or different from the dataset’s publisher. |
| notes | For use by SCDC project only. |
| ** Required if applicable. |
The following categories are used in metadata field curatedCategories.
| name | description |
|---|---|
| Administrative Boundaries | Datasets that describe geographics related to human made boundaries or jurisdictions. Examples: LA County School District Boundaries published by the County of Los Angeles; Park Planning Areas published by the County of Los Angeles |
| Arts & Culture | Datasets that describe public art, cultural events, places of cultural significance and related information. Examples: Community Impact Arts Grants published by the County of Los Angeles; Calendar Events published by the City of Santa Monica. |
| Budgeting & Spending | Datasets that describe finances, budgets and/or spending of agencies or sub agencies. Examples: City of Los Angeles Approved Budget for 2015-2016; Parking Fine Revenue published by the City Controller |
| Crime & Safety | Datasets that reference records or statistics of crimes by point or area, as well as data related to the planning of prevention or execution of response to crime. Examples: Deputy Details - Hit Shooting Incidents and Non-Hit Shooting Incidents 2010 - 2015 published by the County of Los Angeles |
| Demographics | Statistical datasets that describe or relate to local populations and subsets of populations. Examples: Gender Breakdown of City Workers by Department publisher by the City Controller |
| Education | Datasets that relate to the administration of early childhood education programs, K-12 schools, local and state universities. Examples: Title X: McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act Program Database published by California Department of Education |
| Environmental | Datasets that describe the physical environment not created by humans (though –sadly–not necessarily true anymore), such as watersheds, elevation, mountains. Examples: Liquefaction zones published by the City of Los Angeles |
| Health | Datasets that measure or are related to the health and life expectancy of local residents. Examples: Youth Risk Behavior Data Collection published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
| Housing | Datasets that relate to or describe to local housing and homelessness. Examples: Rent Stabilization Ordinance Service Areas published by City of Los Angeles |
| Buildings & Infrastructure | Datasets that relate to the physical and regions’ organizational structures and facilities (i.e. buildings, power sources, roads). Includes construction and proposed construction datasets. Excludes transportation related infrastructure. Examples: Road Repair published by Bureau of Street Services |