The Black Equity Coalition (BEC) in collaboration with the City of Pittsburgh hosted its fourth Community Data Justice Collaborative (CDJC) Workshop, bringing together City staff, community leaders, and advocates committed to transforming how data is collected, managed, and used in Pittsburgh. This session, centered on the theme of reimagining data roles, asked a critical question: “What would it look like if job descriptions for city data workers were grounded in justice, equity, and cultural competence?”
We kicked off the workshop with a warm welcome and a check-in. This is the first meeting in which we ask participants to complete a pre-survey, which helps us to understand their familiarity and comfort-level with the topic, and determine if we are clearly communicating our meeting expectations with them.
Connecting with Purpose
Chris Belasco, the City’s Chief Data Officer shared a presentation he and two members of the CDJC delivered at a recent technology conference in Pittsburgh. This presentation served to provide another overview of the ways that he is hoping to formally institutionalize a role for the CDJC into the City’s data governance policies and practices. The CDJC provides its members with opportunities to shape data policies, improve public data tools, expand open data access, and apply data in practice. Benefits of community participation in the data governance process includes ensuring that data reflects the lived experiences of city residents, technology and data is contextualized for communities, and feedback from community members is incorporated into decisions, investments, and initiatives.
Ruth Howze of the BEC then facilitated a conversation about the essential responsibilities, skills, behaviors, and cultural competencies that CDJC members would like to see in public-sector data workers. Suggestions included:
- Cultural sensitivity
- Patience and curiosity
- Willingness to meaningfully engage different community members with respect
- Knowledge of neighborhoods
- Subject matter expertise, including expertise in infrastructure
- Communication skill, including in languages other than English
- Expertise in accessible and inclusive design
- Understanding of laws that pertain to data, privacy, and technology
The group then went into breakout rooms and participated in small group discussions about what kinds of power different types of data workers have in the City on a range of tasks, including establishing goals and policies, purchasing, adoption of data standards, hiring, training, data management, data collection, data analysis, data use, and communicating with data. To facilitate this conversation, sample job descriptions were shared for the following positions.
- Department Directors are responsible for managing a city department
- Chief Data Officer is responsible for managing data as a strategic asset at the city
- Data Coordinators manage all data within a department
- Data Stewards manage one or more individual datasets and data systems in a department
- Data Analysts draw insights from data and can work with data from one or more departments
The group felt that the department directors and Chief Data Officers had the greatest level of power over data use in the City, while analysts had considerable power over how communities are defined through data analysis and visualization.
Members of the group then had questions about how they might have influence in making sure their suggestions make it into job descriptions and training programs for City data workers. Chris Belasco shared that job descriptions are modified at the start of the hiring process, and that he has some direct power over coordinator and analyst job descriptions. He also has the ability to improve data competencies through the design of enterprise-wide training programs. He also suggested the importance of working with hiring managers to ensure that they are able to understand the importance of the competencies shared by CDJC participants and the importance of being able to identify people with these competencies.
The workshop concluded with participants completing post-workshop surveys to gather their feedback on the workshop experience, including their comfort level, learning outcomes, and suggestions for improvement.
What’s Next?
Looking ahead, the Community Data Justice Collaborative will continue its workshop series with upcoming sessions focused on creating a style guide City data workers can use to ensure that their products are respectful, inclusive, and positively benefit City residents.
About the Community Data Justice Collaborative (CDJC):
The Black Equity Coalition (BEC), in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh created the Community Data Justice Collaborative (CDJC) as part of the broader Data Justice for Pittsburgh’s Black Neighborhoods project, designed to empower Black residents with decision-making authority over how data is used, governed, and shared in the city. Pittsburgh is one of four U.S. cities selected for the Modern Anti-Racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice initiative, supported by the de Beaumont Foundation. The de Beaumont Foundation sponsored the BEC’s work to assist in accelerating the development of health-focused local data ecosystems that center principles of anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power.
The Community Data Justice Collaborative is a group of residents who engage in decisions that the City of Pittsburgh makes about data, technology, and policies that will serve as the foundation of the City’s emerging data governance process. The BEC will engage the Community Data Justice Collaborative and city data stewards in participatory activities to find agreement around how the city uses data and technology.
