{"id":922,"date":"2016-10-17T09:32:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T16:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?p=922"},"modified":"2016-10-17T09:40:09","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T16:40:09","slug":"week-3-blog-on-city-payroll-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/2016\/10\/17\/week-3-blog-on-city-payroll-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 3 Blog on \u201cCity Payroll Data\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dataset I\u00a0select today is\u00a0the\u00a0City Payroll Data<\/a>, which includes quarterly payroll information for all Los Angeles City Departments since 2013, updated by the Los Angeles City Controller’s Office. As displayed in the spreadsheet, the data are assorted according to\u00a0various types:\u00a0\"types\"Row ID,\u00a0Year,\u00a0Department, Title,\u00a0Payroll Department,\u00a0Record Number,\u00a0Job Class Title,\u00a0Employment Type,\u00a0Hourly or Event Rate,\u00a0Projected Annual Salary,\u00a0Q1 Payments,\u00a0Q2 Payments,\u00a0Q3 Payments,\u00a0Q4 Payments,\u00a0Payments Over Base Pay,\u00a0% Over Base Pay,\u00a0Total Payments,\u00a0Base Pay,\u00a0Permanent Bonus Pay,\u00a0Longevity Bonus Pay,\u00a0Temporary Bonus Pay,\u00a0Lump Sum Pay,\u00a0Overtime Pay,\u00a0Other Pay & Adjustments,\u00a0Other Pay (Payroll Explorer),\u00a0MOU,\u00a0MOU Title,\u00a0FMS Department,\u00a0Job Class,\u00a0Pay Grade,\u00a0Average Health Cost,\u00a0Average Dental Cost,\u00a0Average Basic Life,\u00a0Average Benefit Cost,\u00a0Benefits Plan and\u00a0Job Class Link. While there are 285008 rows stored, \u00a0a record in this specific dataset refers to the aforementioned profile of a\u00a0department in the city.<\/p>\n

Wallack and Srinivasan, in their writing, suggested that the ideological effects of the way in which sources have been divided into data could be recognized as either meta-ontology or community ontology. \u00a0Since the dataset is clearly collected and uploaded by\u00a0Los Angeles City Controller’s Office, there is no doubt that it\u00a0is\u00a0an\u00a0information system operated by the state. \u00a0Reflected through the design of certain data types is the official perspective that creates this dataset:\u00a0\u00a0Average Health Cost,\u00a0Average Dental Cost,\u00a0Average Basic Life and Average Benefit Cost are all calculated as expenditure from the government, instead of the real costs of the citizens. \u00a0Thus,\u00a0the current\u00a0dataset caters to purposes of budgeting\u00a0and shows less concerns from the community. \u00a0It\u00a0makes the most sense for officials who are monitoring the annual expenditure as well as analysts interested in\u00a0policymaking and institutional design.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, this dataset demonstrates a detailed, official\u00a0payroll\u00a0information of all Los Angeles City Departments; on the other hand, however, it fails to evaluate\u00a0the effect of the payments on workers. To compensate for its shortcoming, I would try to shed\u00a0some\u00a0lights on the well-being of\u00a0the community : for example, tackling\u00a0income inequality\u00a0will be much easier if the dataset contains the distribution of\u00a0salaries among different gender, race and ethnicity in the same department. Similarly, comparing people’s\u00a0average spending on health related issues to the corresponding payment from the government will make more sense than a unilateral payroll information. \u00a0By\u00a0and large, more community concerns can be\u00a0covered with\u00a0this approach, and the dataset can present more than one perspective although mostly applying meta-ontology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dataset I\u00a0select today is\u00a0the\u00a0City Payroll Data, which includes quarterly payroll information for all Los Angeles City Departments since 2013, updated by the Los Angeles City Controller’s Office. As displayed … Continue reading “Week 3 Blog on \u201cCity Payroll Data\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}