This week, I looked at the Los Angeles’ Active Businesses dataset, which looks at all of the active businesses currently registered with the Office of Finance here in LA. As described on the site, an active business is defined as, “a registered business whose owner has not notified the Office of Finance of a cease of business operations”.
Ontology
In terms of Ontology, the dataset contains 497 thousand entries divided into 16 columns of information. This is quite a large dataset that spans info on businesses across Los Angeles. The columns contain relevant information for a business listing record: Legal name of said business, the operational “Doing Business As” name of the business, and the address of the business. The mailing address is listed in the event that it differs from the physical business. Additionally, the North American Industry Classification, or NAIC #, is attached with a description of said classification (for example, Room and Boarding houses is a NAIC description). Finally, the council the business resides in is recorded, as well as the coordinates for the location and the time frame that business has been located there.
Data Utilization and POV
The data is primarily used by the Office of Finance, who has made this data public since 2014. They update the dataset monthly, keeping tabs on all of the “active” businesses in Los Angeles. The data can be used by the Financial Office to keep tabs on economic activity in Los Angeles, as well as making sure all businesses collect taxes correctly and accurately from such businesses. This data can also be used by economic firms to make economic models and predictions for future business growth in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Missing Information
There are some ways that the data lacks in quality and information. There is no record for non-active businesses, and no simple way to see the rate of businesses lost over time. Additionally, there are some errors and blanks in some categories of the data. For instance, Legal Names are often not filled in, not even left with a No Answer. Also, this data demonstrates the limits of governmental data collection, with limited access to business operations data and additional details on staff diversity and ownership.
Possible Changes
Some beneficial changes for the data would be to add additional business details for use by members of the community. Businesses ownership, economic details, and diversity standards could give community members better knowledge on how our local institutions operate. On the other hand, privacy is essential for our enterprises and should be respected. We should discuss whether or not mailing addresses should be private if desired, as well as other identifying information.