This Week in Government Analytics – 9/12/2016

The CommunutyLogiq team loves hearing about innovation happening in government. Here is a roundup of analytics innovation occurring in government over the last week:

1.  Joe Biden Asks Chicago’s Civis Analytics to Examine How Data Can Help Treat Cancer

From Jim Dallke: As part of Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, Biden met with Wagner and others in the data and analytics fields to discuss how data could help accelerate cancer research and lead to the potential discovery of treatments

2. The Role of Data Analytics in Predictive Policing 

From Eraygon Eidam: Despite the gloomy and often mischaracterized capabilities of police powers in the U.S. and the tools they use daily, a wider look at the profession and its emerging capabilities can show us just how important technology is and will become in policing.

Our take: The article has a great breakdown of a different approaches being utilized by companies and police departments to predict crime. Some examples also address how to avoid information such as race and income, which can lead to biased results and profiling.

3. Using Big Data To Map A City’s ‘Heartbeat’

From Laurie Winkless:  Tube Heartbeat is incredibly data-rich – it displays “…in fifteen-minute intervals throughout a weekday, the volume of tube passengers moving between every adjacent pair of stations on the entire tube network – 762 links across the 11 lines.

Our take: The tube heartbeat map is a great example of the power of visualization and analysis that can be brought to government agencies.  By layering and combining multiple data sets from unique sources, policy makers will have more complete information in making the right decisions for citizens.