Literal mountains of data are generated every day. Especially in urban areas where there are more people and more connectivity to the internet than in a more rural farming community. Availability of data unfortunately doesn’t mean that data is being used well or that the data is accurately representing the people generating it. How can that be? If it’s your data, isn’t it naturally going to represent you accurately? While that seems intuitive there is often hidden context that the data doesn’t pick up.
Let’s look at a typical, urban example. It’s often lamented that people in the inner city aren’t getting enough nutrition, they eat far too much fast food and their health suffers as a result. It’s often assumed that this is due to poor education or that nutritious food isn’t available, that the inner cities are “food deserts”. This is at best only half the story.
Many times, good food is available. The problem is that they are at small bodegas that charge a lot more than the Wal-Mart a few miles down the road. So, when the parents of a struggling family get home from work, they have a few choices; go to the bodega to get some high-priced but fairly fresh food they can barely afford, head to the big box store for food they can afford (but will still need to be prepared) or pick up a few cheeseburgers at the fast food joint that is both affordable and requires no preparation. After a hard eight hours or more on my feet, I know which one tempts me.
Even that added context ignores other points. Why does food cost so much more at the bodega? Even for the same brands? The two main reasons are their size and their location. The fact they are small means they can’t get the kind of bulk discounts or negotiated prices that are available to the big box stores. Also, the location means it’s just physically more difficult to get product to the store. It’s a lot of time and fuel to burn just to drop off a few boxes. Since the bodega still has to make a profit, they have to raise prices accordingly. All of that information won’t get picked up if you’re just looking for data on people’s eating habits.
It actually is possible to get good data that has all the context and representation you could ask for. Rockford, IL decided they were actually going to do something about homelessness instead of just continually throwing money at it like most do year after year. Their first step was a novel one, they realized they needed data and to get it, they actually went on the ground and talked to people. Yes, a government entity actually thought of putting in the effort to get primary source data. What’s more, they actually did something with it. They didn’t just talk to people about the problem, they talked to them about what potential solutions might be. As a result, they got different people in different organizations working together to solve the problem instead of jealously protecting their turf. Within one year, they almost completely solved homelessness.
Their on the ground approach meant they were getting data from people who typically produce very little and they got context for that data as well. Rather than just staying back and collecting data from second and third parties, they went to the source and got better, context rich data that allowed them to get the right tools to solve the problem.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is exactly the kind of approach that TARTLE has been preaching. By going to the individual you get solid data and the reasons that data exists. Armed with context-rich source data better solutions are possible, solutions that are cheaper and more beneficial for everyone.
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