Defining a data intermediary

If you work in a library, much of what civic data intermediaries do will feel incredibly familiar to you! At their root, these are organizations or individuals who help people find, use, and apply public information. More specifically, The National Neighborhood Neighborhood Indicators Partnership has identified three main types of intermediary activities in a 2016 report by Hendley, Cowan, Kingsley, and Pettit.

1. Assemble, transform, and maintain data. This may seem, at first, just like the traditional collecting function of libraries. But with civic data, intermediaries often do some things a bit differently in ways that are helpful to know. While some data comes from publicly-accessible data sources such as the U.S. Census, intermediaries like Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University also often work with “raw” administrative data generated by business processes within state and local governments. Data like these are not always open, and not always accessible to a general audience in its original form, so data intermediaries often work to combine data from multiple sources, or otherwise transform data. In Denver, the Shift Research Lab has built Community Facts, an interactive website enabling users to view community indicators for neighborhoods across the region.

2. Disseminate information and apply the data to achieve impact. A very basic level of disseminating information is to publish it online. You can get a snapshot of civic open data publishing in the United States through the US City Open Data Census website [now deprecated], run by the Sunlight Foundation, Code for America, and Open Knowledge International. Much of this data is available through city-based portals. But the work of data intermediaries often goes further, to make the data more applicable to specific users. Many publish paper reports with relevant community data. Some intermediaries build web-based tools that enable users to query and download data, create interactive maps and generate data visualizations. Intermediaries also collaborate with local partners to use data to inform conversations, influence policy, and improve communities. Partners of data intermediaries often include local government staff and elected officials, community and nonprofit organizations, community activists, journalists, and university researchers. The Children’s Trust, the NNIP Partner in Miami, holds community engagement sessions with parents, teachers, and other community stakeholders to share the neighborhood-level results of the kindergarten readiness tests. Together, they explore root causes, implications, and potential responses to better prepare their kids for school.

3. Use data to strengthen civic capacity and governance. Data intermediaries help build a community’s capacity to use civic information. Through training and technical assistance, intermediaries can help local stakeholders apply data to their work – aligning with information literacy efforts in libraries. The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance trains librarians at the Pratt Library to use community data so they can help residents answer questions about conditions in their own neighborhood.