To provide the Memphis City Council with needed data, information, capacity and optional anytime video training, through a web based data portal, to inform data-driven decision-making.
Unlike the United States Congress having owned Congressional Budget Office support, the Memphis City Council lacks Council owned and administered compiled public data to support its public decision-making. This lack of public data support leaves the Council and public vulnerable to funding initiatives based on, at times, wild marketing claims of entities requesting public funds.
To that extent, phone accessible, compiled and Council owned web-based public data, provides needed foundational and informational support, from which the Council can efficiently and confidently evaluate public policy and funding requests, while exercising data-driven decision-making. Without such Council owned and administered data, it is impossible for the City Council itself, to be efficiently data-driven.
Given the former, a web portal is proposed that will initially provide MLGW, economic and workforce development data, with optional training support for Councilmembers, staff, nonprofits and public through web-based video. See data links at the end of this document.
The following instructional objectives will be addressed in the training videos totaling no more than 2 hours of instructional time:
- Participants will learn of public data sources, to measure MLGW capital spend, local economic and workforce development outcomes and how to locate those authoritative publicly authored data sources.
- Participants will learn key components of MLGW’s monthly financial reports to include, year-to-date electrical capital expenditures.
- Participants will learn Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) survey methodology to support its authorship of the Quarterly Census of Employment Wage (QCEW) data to inform local employment, wage and business establishment measurement.
- Participants will learn to locate the BLS QCEW source data on the Internet.
- Participants will learn the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) survey methodology, to support its authorship of postsecondary outcomes.
- Participants will learn to locate the BLS QCEW source data on the Internet.
- Participants will learn the projection methodology for Tennessee Department of Labor for employment projections, while learning to locate the source data on the Internet.
- Participants will learn a summary history of the Occupational Information Network (ONET), as well as the many occupational measures available through ONET.
- Participants will learn to locate ONET on the Internet.
- Using their cell phone, participants will review compilations of the above public data sets, using a Memphis City Council web portal, in a local implementation of public data to inform public decision-making.
In short, without owned centralized localized public data, the Memphis City Council cannot efficiently and confidently exercise data-driven decision-making. The only barrier to owning such data might be costs. But such costs are minimal in comparison to a $700M budget.
To view a local implementation of public data, following these links: