From the L.A. Controller’s Office, I chose to explore the dataset regarding funds relating to Health, Environment and Sanitation. I choose this set because I thought it would be interesting to find out how much our city really spends on the environment.
The data types of this set include the categories of Fund name, cash, department name, fund purpose, sources of funds, eligible uses, and many other categories regarding the specific logistics regarding cost and efficiency. The records are all based on general categories that have been funded for the purpose of making the city more environmentally friendly or sustainable.
From reading Wallack’s and Srinivasan’s article titled “Local-GLobal: Reconciling Mismatched Ontologies in Development Information Systems”, we see that there is often a major discrepancy between communities and ontologies. By applying the knowledge I gained from that article, I can see that even this dataset represents this lack in connection. The data has a category for fund purpose, however, we never see how these purposes went into effect. For example, under the department name of transportation, there is a category named Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction with a spending report of $4,923,189.09. This category states that there is a fund purpose “For Air Pollution Reduction Projects”. There are many issues with this data regarding how its being perceived. First being that the purpose is incredibly broad. I have no idea what specific projects are being aided, how many projects exist and if these projects are even effective. Wallace and Srinivasan mentioned that Ontologies represent reality, however it is the representation of these ontologies that actually shape reality. In this case the reality is almost nonexistent as I have yet to learn much from this dataset other than a few simple menial facts.
I think the officials who create budgets for LA County would find this the most useful as they could use this information as a reference in creating more budget proposals. I also think that environmental activists who believe that the city is not doing a good job at reducing air pollution would find this information useful as it shows the contrasts of budget vs. efficiency.
This data set shows that the city spends an incredible amount of money regarding waste funds compared to recycling and renewable energy funds. Also, the effects of these funds are left out and no data regarding the total conservation reductions are shown.
From someone else’s point of view, I would see that this data set shows how much the City of Los Angeles has improved its funding on environmental and sanitation services. I would say that the city of LA has taken great steps into funding recycling activities and preservations services.
Interesting, and great analysis. I examined a data set that involved gender disparities of employees per city department, and like your data set, I felt like there was a lot of context that the dataset didn’t include that would have explained the results of the data. It allows for many different interpretations of the data, as you mentioned in your own blog post.