The ControlPanel LA aims to be a source for LA citizens to gain information about, “the city’s expenditures, revenues, payroll, special, funds and more.” I chose to explore the “What we Buy” dataset on the LA Controller’s website. The data included provides information about purchases made by the city of Los Angeles with government funds. The data set features some categories of spending on their website that include images, such as “Fit Motorcycle Patrol Boots,” “Leased Golf Carts,” “Soccer Balls,” “Basketball Nets,””Wet Mops,” and “Thermoplastic Marking Material,” and more.
A record in this data set is the item purchased by the city of Los Angeles and the details surrounding that purchase. This is evident when you click on a category and you come to a data table, with tools similar to OpenRefine, that is organized by “Fiscal Year,” “Department Name,” “Vendor Name,””Transaction Dollar Amount,” “Description,””Detailed Item Description,””Item Code Name,””Value of Spend,””Unit Price,””Quantity,””Sales Tax,””Discount,””Unit of Measure,” “Fund Name,” and more. The data’s ontology comes from the Los Angeles city government, and the government of the United States. The ways in which government purchases are recorded, including the types of information and details surrounding the purchases, have been systematically codified over time by the wider US government, and by local and state governments in ways that ensure metadata cohesion and facilitate their needs from the data. This data set makes the most sense from the perspective of a government agency, yet I believe it can be easily understood by US citizens, and is of interest to citizens. Two of the overarching, ontological principles that the US government was founded upon are transparency and the distribution of power, I believe that this website was created with those principles in mind in order to show citizens that these principles are still being enacted. The information provided is very comprehensive. This website is made for LA citizens yet, under the “Activity” heading only 49 people have visited the site and none have rated it or commented on it.
More qualitative data, such as how the purchase of a basketball net improved a local recreation center is left out because it is not of immediate importance to the records of the government. However, this type of information may be interesting to a local community or citizen. One could also create a dataset from the ontology of the facilities that purchase these items, data could include quantitative information about the purchases, and also qualitative information about the utility of the items and how they affect the facilities and departments that use them.