Posts by Michelle Riordan-Nold
Connecticut Census Create-a-Thon

On Friday, November 8, Connecticut held its first-ever Census Create-A-Thon (#CreativesForTheCount). This event brought together Census Complete Count Committee representatives, municipal leaders, grassroots organizers, designers, content strategists, and media experts to create materials to reach hard-to-count communities across the state. During the four-hour event, teams developed over 20 communications materials such as posters, billboards, and public service announcements about the importance of Census 2020. CTData Collaborative Director of Community Impact, Elizabeth Grim, and Old Saybrook Selectman, Carol Conklin, won second place and $250 for the best content for their design: “I’m Learning to Count: Count Me in 2020.” Thank you, Expressiones Cultural Center in New London, for graciously donating the award.

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State Data Plan Forum Recap: Education and Workforce Development

On Monday, August 19, 2019, the CTData Collaborative hosted over 30 partners for a data forum on education and workforce development with the state’s Chief Data Officer, Tyler Kleykamp. Attendees included data lovers and users across multiple sectors including nonprofits, state agencies, philanthropy, higher education, advocacy organizations, for-profits, and independent consultants. CTData Executive Director, Michelle Riordan-Nold, remarked, “The diverse group of stakeholders engaged in the forum demonstrates the complexity of the topic and the necessity to address educational and workforce needs in the state.”

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Recent Mothers with Higher Education More Likely to Be in the Labor Force

This is a landmark decade for women in the labor force. Women represent nearly half of the labor force both nationally (47.2%) and in the state of Connecticut (48.6%). In addition, according to the Wall Street Journal, 2019 marks “the first year that women make up the majority of the college-educated labor force, a milestone that is already altering benefits packages offered by companies.” These changes are insightful given that labor force participation is even higher when we look at women who have had a child in the past 12 months.

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What’s Changing with Census Data Availability? Differential Privacy: What is It and Why it Matters for Census 2020

CTData has traveled state to state on the conference circuit over the past few months. We recently attended the American Community Survey (ACS) Users Data Conference in Washington, DC; the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership Meeting in Milwaukee, WI; the Census State Data Center Conference in Charlotte, NC; and the Association for Public Data Users Conference in Washington DC. One of the most pressing topics of discussion was the 2020 Census and its new differential privacy policies. To help you gain some clarity about these contested policies, we’ll provide background about the census, discuss existing privacy protections, and describe upcoming changes to Census 2020 under differential privacy.

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New American Community Survey 5-year estimates and CTData tool Released today!

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau, released the latest American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates (2013-2017). These data are the only data available at the census tract and municipal level for Connecticut. We have created a tool that enables you view changes for: median household income, population estimates, population without health insurance, poverty status, and median rent. (User beware: when comparing data overtime using ACS 5-year estimates, only use non-overlapping time periods.) CTData has over 50 ACS datasets that we process and curate and will be updating these datasets over the next couple weeks.

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Draft State Data Plan available

The State’s Chief Data Officer has submitted the Draft State Plan in response to PA 18-175. Click here for the plan. A public hearing will be held, November 15 at 10am at the Legislative Office Building. This will be the last opportunity for public input on the plan. The Data Analysis and Advisory Board has 30 days from today to submit comments on the plan. A final plan will be delivered by December 31, 2018.

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PolicyMichelle Riordan-Nold
Ilya Ilyankou joins CTData as Civic Technologist

Ilya Ilyankou has joined the Connecticut Data Collaborative as a Civic Technologist.  Ilyankou graduated from Trinity College in Hartford in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a double major in Computer Science and Studio Arts. He also spent a year abroad at Oxford University, where his studies included machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data visualization.

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CTData and Liberal Arts Action Lab at Trinity College, receive 500 Cities Data Challenge grant!

The Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed this challenge grant to encourage communities to delve into the 500 Cities open-access dataset, to design innovative solutions on social factors that influence health, and to guide local organizations on how to effectively use neighborhood-level data. The broader goal is to promote more comprehensive cross-collaborative approaches to foster a broader “Culture of Health” in urban areas.

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Open Data gets Codified! Data Legislation HB 5517 passed!

I'm re-posting an older post where we were looking for support for HB 5517. Great news, the legislation was passed on the last night of the session! Thank you to everyone who advocated, testified, and wrote letters to their legislators. We are excited about the components of the legislation (there's more than only codifying EO#39). Join our open data call on Tuesday from 3-4 to learn more from the State's Chief Data Officer, Tyler Kleykamp.

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New Housing Data Portal

Today we are launching what is the beginning of a housing data portal: housing.ctdata.org! This project began as a quest to understand the difference between multiple data sources for a particular indicator. The inquiry evolved into this new data portal focused on multiple sources of housing data. This housing data portal gives users the ability to explore, download, and analyze housing data in your town.

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A Story About Liberating Public Data

For the past few years we have been working with the CT Secretary of State (SOTS) on a variety of initiatives related to the business registration data that they process and manage. This dataset is the official data set of record for tracking businesses that are required to register to operate within Connecticut. However, accessing this data has been historically difficult. The CONCORD system was built and optimized for the important work of managing transactions around business registration and reporting.

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