Data is an essential asset for the City of Portland. We rely on data to support decision making, inform and engage with the public, track performance, manage and plan our work. Proper data management must be accountable to our partners and communities—building more trust to improve City services. This is why the City of Portland created City Data Governance Committee. The committee adopts citywide principles, policies, and best practices to ensure and maintain data usability, integrity, and privacy.
Who is on the committee?
There is one member and one vote per City bureau and office. Each member is appointed by City Council and Bureau Directors. Committee members have the authority to make data and technology decisions and recommendations on behalf of their bureau or office. Each member is also committed to bringing information back and forth between the committee and their bureau or office.
Project Updates:
Demographic Data Standards
The City Data Governance Committee in partnership with Office of Equity and Human Rights is working on forming demographic data standards and guidance for City staff when collecting and reporting on data related to: race, ethnicity, language, disability, tribal affiliation, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, income, household status, household size, education level, employment status and location.
Collecting and analyzing demographic data is vital to inform decisions and effectively provide services to Portland’s changing population. Standardized methodology improves the ability to recognize and eliminate disparities and is necessary to improve the City’s policymaking, quality service and program delivery, and equitable resource allocation strategies. These standards allow the City to better work with and respond to communities.
Collecting demographic data also requires thoughtful planning and data management. There must be a clear question to answer and plan for how the data will be used. The committee’s work on demographic data standards includes guidance to help protect privacy and support collaboration to design effective data collection and reporting methods.
However, the demographic data standards on race, ethnicity, language, disability, and tribal affiliation are on the last stage in the rulemaking process to become an administrative rule—one that will be effective across all City bureaus and offices. The policy will be going out for final Citywide comment on March 19, and are due before April 9th. After comments are reviewed, the rulemaking will proceed to become administrative rule.
The demographic data standards related to gender identity, sexual orientation, age, income, household status, household size, education level, employment status and location are still under development.
Metadata Standards
The committee is establishing metadata standards for data that is shared between bureaus or made available citywide. The purpose of a citywide metadata standard is to leverage industry best practices of having a consistent way of summarizing basic descriptive information about data—which will facilitate an easier route of finding and working with instances of data. This standard is not intended to capture all information about a given dataset but rather to provide a starting point and to overlap with existing bureau-level metadata standards. As our data ecosystem in the City matures, the Data Governance Committee will reassess metadata requirements including methods to collect and share metadata.
The metadata standards draft went out for City comment and have been reviewed by the Committee. Now, they are working to incorporate the feedback received. The Committee will then vote on April 8 on implementing the standards.