Citizen DAN Proposal Intrigues Me

There's an interesting proposal up for the Knight News Challenge awards this year. The proposal is for something called "Citizen DAN", with DAN standing for Public Data Appliance and Network.

You can read the proposal here, which includes external links for more information.

Here's a short description of the project:

Citizen DAN is an open source framework to leverage relevant local data for citizen journalists. It is a:



■Appliance for filtering and analyzing data specific to local community indicators


■Means to visualize local data over time or by neighborhood


■Meeting place for the public to upload and share local data and information


■Web data portal that can be individually tailored by any local community


■Node in a global network of communities across which to compare indicators of community well-being.


Good decisions and good journalism require good information. Starting with pre-loaded government data, Citizen DAN provides any citizen the framework to learn and compare local statistics and data with other similar communities. This helps to promote the grist for citizen journalism; it is also a vehicle for discovery and learning across the community.


Citizen DAN comes pre-packaged with all necessary deployment components and documentation, including local data from government sources. It includes facilities for direct upload of additional local data in formats from spreadsheets to standard databases. Many standard converters are included with the basic package.


Citizen DAN may be implemented by local governments or by community advocacy groups. When deployed, using its clear documentation, sponsors may choose whether or what portions of local data are exposed to the broader Citizen DAN network. Data exposed on the network is automatically available to any other network community for comparison and analysis purposes.


This data appliance and network (DAN) is multi-lingual. It will be tested in three cities in Canada and the US, showing its multi-lingual capabilities in English, Spanish and French.

What has me most excited is not just the project itself, but the growth in open-source solutions to data presentation/management for community indicators programs. These should lower the barriers to entry for many communities to establish/maintain a useful indicators set, and help spur increased innovation in both what we measure and how we use what we measure.

As more of these solutions move from the drawing board through testing and implementation, we'll share them here. In the meantime, I applaud the many folks out there doing good work to make my job both easier and more effective.

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Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project

Since this blog tends to attract people who are both technologically savvy (at least savvy enough to read a blog!) and interested in community indicators, I thought you might want to read about this new effort, the Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project.

The Seattle IT department conducted city-wide surveys and focus groups in order to understand how well they're doing in creating a "technologically healthy community." This link provides access to their goals, indicators, and reports they've created to answer the question.

I was leading a training session this morning in my community about our new web-based indicators tool and got into an interesting discussion about future indicator sets -- are we thinking now about the things we will need to measure to understand our community in the face of constant, exponential change in so many aspects of society? I don't have an answer to that question yet -- I'll be mulling it over and would love your inputs -- but what they're doing in Seattle is likely an important step in rethinking community visions and the indicators we need to be measuring.

Hat tip: Jonl via twitter

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Data Gathering Technologies

Here's a note from some folks over at GeoAge that I thought some of you might be interested in.

Rapid data collection and data sharing enables multi-disciplinary approach to community preservation research projects

Traditionally, university research projects involve reams of paper forms that require many hours of data entry, re-entry, printing and filing. In most cases, the printed reports remain in boxes or cabinets … the data isn’t shared or used as it could have been. Following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the CADGIS lab at LSU decided to capture research data on New Orleans historical / cultural preservation with the latest mobile technologies; and further, to make that data available to other departments within LSU.

LSU’s CADGIS lab, under the direction of Dr. Barrett Kennedy, comprises design, art and anthropology. Its focus in New Orleans included studies of historical, cultural and community preservation and recovery in the Lakeview and Holy Cross neighborhoods – nearly 2500 historic structures. To collect data quickly, then report and map the data, CADGIS used GeoAge FAST Designer software on its laptops and GeoAge FAST PDA on its Dell PDAs in the field. The research team captured digital photos with Ricoh cameras, GPS points and a wealth of condition data via FAST data collection forms. Back at the CADGIS lab, data was downloaded for instant reports and maps.

“A critical element of this data is the ability to share with other disciplines at LSU,” noted Dr. Kennedy. “Researchers in sociology can access and extend what we’ve already collected.” LSU’s CADGIS team has been successful developing a rapid-response, GIS-based solution for managing cultural heritage resource data and using GeoAge’s FAST software to integrate that data with natural resource data for more effective disaster response, mitigation, and recovery actions. According to Dr. Kennedy, “We’re confident that LSU’s ongoing research efforts will spawn significant opportunities to develop efficient, cost-effective, integrated approaches to future natural and cultural resource management situations.”


Louisiana State University’s CADGIS team applied a multi-disciplinary method using FAST software on their Dell PDAs … deploying electronic data forms for rapid data collection, digital photo attachment and GPS information in several New Orleans neighborhoods. Data is downloaded in CADGIS’ Baton Rouge lab, exported to several reporting and mapping applications, as well as shared with other academic departments involved in post-Katrina community preservation research projects.

For more information, see http://www.geoage.com/solutions.html and the videos at http://www.geoage.com/videos.html.

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