The dataset from City of L.A, Listing of Active Businesses, tells us about all active businesses in Los Angeles City who are currently registered with the Office of Finance. Those in the Office of Finance who complied this list define “active” businesses as those whose owner has not notified their office that the business stopped conducting operations. This listing is updated monthly, and was last updated on Oct. 17, 2017.
The dataset’s content model includes: Location Account #, Business name, DBA (Doing Business As) Name, Street Address, City, Zip Code, Location Description, Mailing Address, Mailing City, Mailing Zip Code, NAICS (North American Industry classification System) code, Primary NAICS Description, Council District, Location Start Date, Location End Date, and Location by Latitude & Longitude. The dataset contains 496904 records.
Those who want to know geographical location (ex. street address, location description, longitude & latitude, mailing address) of these businesses would find the data to be most useful. Others may use the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code and description columns as a standardized way to categorize the businesses. These are useful to those who may, for example, need to refer to code 443120 – Women’s Clothing Stores.
It’s important to note, however, that this dataset lacks more useful information to the general public than it contains. First, the NAICS code and descriptions are not specific. 2,600+ businesses fall under Code 9999 – Unclassified Establishments and other codes such as Code 812990 – All Other Personal Services are vague descriptions of the services/products offered. The column “Location End Date” is also empty for all of the records, which makes sense because if a business has a location end date, it implies that it ceases to operate, which means that it does not belong on the list of active businesses. The dataset also does not include business owner or contact information. This data is more useful for keeping records than it is for helping the public learn about these businesses.
If I were to start over with this Listing of Active Businesses, I would want to compile information that would be practical for those who want to know more about business services/products. It would helpful for us to classify businesses with more specific information, perhaps including categories found on Yelp such as Restaurants (and within that category, type of restaurant – ex. comfort food, fast food, ethnic) or Beauty & Spas (and within that category, type of beauty & spa – ex. massage, hair salon, hair removal) and with price range and contact information. Although this ontology would be very similar to the information the Yelp app provides, its categories may be more helpful to the general public.
This is a really interesting dataset – I can’t even imagine who keeps track of all this information! I feel like most of the information in this set is important to city government officials who are planning for the city in general. I also wish it included more “general public” categories that would help people navigate categories of businesses better.