From March 12th to April 30th I completed the
Civic Data Ambassadors program, which was offered by the City of Boston in collaboration with the Engagement Lab at Emerson College. The program was advertised to Boston librarians who were curious about civic data and were interested in becoming Civic Data Ambassadors. As student ambassadors, we learned about what civic data is, how it can be used to answer questions, how it impacts the Boston community, methods on searching and filtering open data, tools that can be used to create visualizations that can help with analysis, and how to identify when someone else can make use of such data. “Open data,” as defined by the
Open Data Handbook, is data that “can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone;” “use” could mean simply viewing the information for general interest or research purposes, or it could mean using it to create a helpful tool (i.e. weather app, traffic app, etc.). As part of the course we completed projects using primarily the open data published in
Analyze Boston; however, I came out of the program wanting to learn more about open data that is published by the Massachusetts state government. It’s important to keep in mind that data is just as important and useful for research as published reports are—maybe even more so! Below are examples of open data portals available online that are maintained by state and quasi-state agencies on a regular basis; they also allow data to be downloaded or exported into user-friendly formats (i.e. CSV and Excel files).
 |
Dataset titled “Lead and Copper Drinking Water Results in Schools/Childcare,”
published via the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Data Portal. |
General
MassData: the Open Data Initiative for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Education
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Data Center
MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) School & District Statewide Reports
Transportation
Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Open Data Portal
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Data Dashboard
Financial/Economic
Office of the Comptroller’s CTHRU: Financial Records Transparency Platform
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Open Checkbook
Division of Banks Foreclosure Petition Website
Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance Contributions and Expenditures Data
Department of Unemployment Assistance - Labor Market Information (LMI)
Energy and Environment
Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) Data Portal
Mass Save Data
Health
Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) Databooks
Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking
Municipal
Division of Local Services (DLS) Municipal Databank
Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) Open Data
If you are interested in Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, check out our earlier blog about shapefiles, data layers, and mapping tools published by the state:
http://mastatelibrary.blogspot.com/2016/12/massachusetts-interactive-mapping.html
Kaitlin Connolly
Reference Department
