This article is written by Temilola Afolabi, Program Manager - Open Data for Equity, Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE). She can be reached at temilola@odenterprise.org for questions or feedback.
The problem: Existing data helps us understand the historical trends that continue to profoundly influence the lives of Black and Brown Americans today. However, we need better data across five major areas to achieve equity goals: access to quality healthcare, fair housing, workforce opportunity, criminal justice and climate and environmental justice.
Why it matters: More and better data spanning various facets of life, from education to healthcare to economic opportunities, will better equip policymakers to confront persistent equity issues.
The solution: Open data can be applied to improve equity in health, housing, workforce, criminal justice and climate and the environment. Mapping Racial Equity: From Data to Communities, published by the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), explores and visualises existing applications and opportunities for open data to support racial equity.
US government policymakers at all levels — national, state and city — are increasingly addressing long-standing societal inequities. To do so, they need more and better data across key policy areas including health, housing, workforce, criminal justice and climate and the environment. More comprehensive, high-quality and machine-understandable data in these key areas can help policymakers gain a deeper understanding of the equity challenges they face and harness that understanding as a catalyst for meaningful change.
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My organisation, the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), has been building a programme on Data for Equity for the past several years. In doing so, we have learned how open data can be leveraged to build equity across these key areas. Our new website shows the power of data to identify issues of racial equity and foster work on solutions.
Addressing healthcare shortfalls in underserved communities
Studies show that poor healthcare access puts Black and Brown Americans at higher risk of poor health outcomes. Social determinants of health and other key data can identify underlying factors leading to high healthcare utilisation, shed light on variable health outcomes across communities and help policymakers, insurance companies and medical providers better target interventions and investments. Data is already being used to depict measures of vulnerability at the hyperlocal level, including the prevalence of chronic conditions, access to care, place-based risk models and more. Mapping Racial Equity demonstrates how the social determinants of health impact health outcomes and how, where someone lives can directly impact their health risk.
Identifying unfair housing practices
Black and other communities of colour face a number of obstacles relating to housing and home ownership, including discriminatory housing practices, mortgage-lending discrimination and affordability. Open housing data is revealing the ongoing effects of historical housing discrimination, equipping decision-makers to develop targeted desegregation efforts and connecting minority communities to financing, among other benefits. Local housing authorities and decision-makers can use data (e.g. HUDs Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing data) to identify historically redlined and housing-disenfranchised communities and use this as a first step to developing more affordable housing and preventing harmful practices.
Understanding the impact of over-policing on marginalised communities
Racial disparities and discriminative treatment are present at all levels of the criminal justice system, from policing to the courts. CODE and the nonprofit Measures for Justice held a multistakeholder roundtable to improve equitable outcomes in policing by using open data. By improving the quality and increasing the collection of policing data, local advocates and decision-makers can measure the impacts of bias-based law enforcement, analyse the potential for policy reforms to reduce police violence, develop methods to reduce crime and arrest rates and engage in more informed and equitable decision-making.
Connecting workers to jobs
Unconscious bias, discriminative job requirements and insufficient training and education systems are all contributing to unequal outcomes in the American workforce. To better understand disparities in workforce outcomes and identify equitable solutions, we need key information including data on the effectiveness of postsecondary education programmes; standardised skills and competency information to connect people to jobs; and data-driven technology to decrease bias in job requirements and recruitment processes. Disaggregated data on income, employment status and workforce-disadvantaged areas are already becoming more available through initiatives like the Justice40 CEJST tool and other Federal sources.
Ensuring communities of colour are resilient to the impacts of climate change
As climate hazards and the effects of climate change intensify, low-income and minority-majority communities are disproportionately suffering the economic and physical impacts. Open data on climate, built environment and socioeconomic conditions can help vulnerable communities develop more accurate risk assessments, channel Federal funding and capacity building to those communities and design impactful adaptation and mitigation programmes. There are already dozens of models, data sources, use cases and additional resources available for climate-risk assessment at all geographic levels, but much more needs to be done, particularly to integrate local data into adaptation and resilience efforts.
CODE has spent the past four years carrying out research, holding convenings and developing resources to promote the use of open data to improve equity. CODE and the IBM Center for the Business of Government collaborated on a number of issue briefs and reports on equitable data use for the Federal Government. We recently launched a new website to showcase our findings, Mapping Racial Equity: From Data to Communities. The website, created using Esri’s StoryMaps platform, explores and visualises ways that open data can be applied to improve equity in health, housing, workforce, criminal justice and climate and the environment. We encourage users to provide their feedback and share additional resources via this link or the landing or through the Mapping Racial Equity landing page.
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