We have published two reports based on several years of research into the technical and information infrastructure supporting community boards. The first report, BetaNYC and Civic Innovations Fellows Community Board and Technology Needs Report, summarizes interviews with district managers about the current state of technology within district offices and their most pressing technology needs going forward.
The second report, Data Design Challenges and Opportunities for NYC Community Boards, outlines how boards use city information in decision-making and in prioritizing district needs and the challenges they face in accessing and leveraging city information. It identifies specific use cases where boards could benefit from more accessible city information.
Both reports conclude with actionable recommendations.
Links to PDF’ed reports:
- 2018 Reports Executive Summary
- 2015 Technology needs report.
- Community Board Technology Needs Report 2018 – Final Version
- Data design challenges and opportunities for community boards report
Rationale for Research
BetaNYC is committed to supporting community boards advance their capacity to listen to their constituents at scale so that they can meaningfully represent their communities. For the past three years, BetaNYC has been conducting research on community board technical and data needs because we believe that such resources empower boards to meet the capabilities of other government agencies, companies, and firms. Technical and data resources upgrade a board’s capacity to conduct community outreach and to represent the diverse and, at times, underrepresented needs in their communities. Technical and information infrastructure can also help make tedious community board tasks more efficient, allowing them to focus more on big picture issues.
BetaNYC has placed community boards at the center of our research because we believe that their experience living and working within their communities uniquely positions them to understand technical problems and to audit biases in data. BetaNYC recognizes the ways in which both technology and data have been leveraged as tools to disempower communities – accelerating automation, enabling surveillance and unjust profiling, and crafting narratives that distort community needs. We are committed to conducting research, producing recommendations, and designing tools that are responsive to these contexts – not assuming that technology fixes are always the most appropriate for addressing community needs or that numbers alone can represent complex problems. We are committed to advancing community boards’ technical and data literacy skills, not only so that they can leverage these resources on their own, but also so that they can better anticipate and respond to the ways in which technology and data practices can be used to marginalize their neighborhoods and constituents. We believe that community boards should be enlisted as experts in civic technology initiatives – uniquely positioned to review and audit technologies that will affect their constituents and data purporting to represent their communities.
Methods
BetaNYC conducted 23 interviews with district managers and other district office staff in Manhattan and Brooklyn, seeking to better understand their workflows, frustrations, current technical capacity, and what they hoped to see improved. We also reviewed community board district needs statements, attended several community board and district service cabinet meetings, and conducted a city-wide survey to learn more about community board data success stories and needs. These two reports present the culmination of BetaNYC’s research into community board technical and information infrastructure. They provide practical recommendations to community boards, civic technologists, city agencies, and elected officials for improving technical and data infrastructure, while remaining sensitive to the political and ethical contexts of technology and data use.
Summary of Needs
Technology Needs
Our research documents that community boards are not yet equipped to take advantage of modern technology to perform their responsibilities more smoothly. The following are a list of their more salient needs:
| Communication Infrastructure | Hardware | Software | Services | Trainings |
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Data Needs
While many of the district managers we interviewed outlined specific use cases for which the board would like to leverage city and state data resources, they also acknowledged the challenges to doing so. Sometimes, the data they wish to leverage has not been published by the City, is not up-to-date, nor is categorized in a way that makes it irrelevant to addressing their issue. At other times, community boards and district offices do not have the time, skills, or technical infrastructure to work with data resources effectively. Boards and district offices are also concerned that ignoring biases in City datasets will lead them to overlook certain community issues, misrepresent marginalized populations, or propagate a culture of surveillance. With this in mind, BetaNYC has come to outline the following information infrastructure needs:
| Training | Tools | Infrastructure | Staff and Support | Collaborative Design Practices | Improved Transparency |
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Recommendations
The digital age and New York City’s commitment to using technology for public good create opportunities for community boards to operate more effectively than ever. Modern technological tools enable boards to dramatically extend outreach and bolster civic engagement in new and exciting ways. New York City’s Open Data Law, the availability of hundreds of pertinent datasets, and government-created mapping tools give boards a deep well of new relevant information. However, to successfully modernize and make use of all of these developments, boards need dedicated help, technical assistance, and funding. BetaNYC recommends the following:
| Community Boards | Civic Tech Community | City Agencies | Elected Officials |
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