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<aside> 💡 See other units in the syllabus
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This is a detailed breakdown of how David Eaves, a Lecturer at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP), teaches the contents of Unit 5 of the open access syllabus developed by Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age. Read how part two of Unit 5 is taught here.
It is part of a series of twenty-five classes that David developed originally for the Harvard Kennedy School's master and executive education programs, where he taught for eight years, and are now taught at UCL's master and applied learning programs.
This page contains a summary of a presentation by Dr Amen Ra Mashariki, former Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York and the Director of the Mayor's Office of Data Analytics, given to David Eaves' students enrolled in "DPI-662 Digital Government: Technology, Policy, and Public Service Innovation" at the Harvard Kennedy School. This class, combined with a second, enable David to teach across the learning outcomes described in Unit 5.
We believe presenting diverse ways to teach the syllabus will help others adopt and teach the material in various contexts. See here how Konstanz University's Prof Ines Mergel teaches the same unit.
This page was developed for university faculty who teach public administrators or master's levels students in public policy and public administration. This material may also be suitable for teaching to upper year undergraduates.
In the unit on data - we focus on issues public sector leaders and managers will need about in regards data: Data for decision making, Data as infrastructure and Data is political.
To open this unit we invite in Dr Mashariki talks about his experiences on these three topics and provides insights on how data analytics' teams help make governments more effective.
While Dr. Mashariki covers a range of topics there are three areas that are of particularly interest to students of this course.
Data for Decision Making: Dr Mashariki discusses the competencies and functions of a policy-maker data scientist and the challenges and opportunities associated with this role. This includes tactical challenges such as:
These insights will be particularly helpful for policy makers and public administrators that hope to apply data analytics to policy and service delivery challenges.
Data as Infrastructure: Dr Mashariki shares his outline of the civic data "life cycle" - how data is created, how it flows through an organization and some of the management challenges that appear at each stage. This view is critical for senior public administrators who will be accountable to how data is managed and used on their watch. (David will expand on this element of the presentation in Part 2 of the class)
The Analytics Playbook for Cities: A Navigational Tool for Understanding Data Analytics in Local Government, Confronting Trade-Offs, and Implementing Effectively (2020), Amen Ra Mashariki and Nicolas Diaz for the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Open data outcomes: U.S. cities between product and process innovation (2018), Mergel, Kleibrink, and Sörvik.
It's the icing, not the cake: key lesson on open data for governments, (2011), David Eaves
In this presentation, Amen Ra shares insights on how cities use data and what it means to lead a data team in a city government. The main insights and takeaways from this conversation are explained in the videos below.