Through the Los Angeles City Controller Website, I found a dataset on the city’s special funding report. This report is quite extensive, and contains many different data types. This includes character data, a myriad of monetary data, date and time data. Personally, the extensive monetary data is the most interesting part of this dataset, as it explores the financially decision makings of the city. This dataset defines a record as the financial and logistical backing of a city project. For example, Fund 169 is an acceptable record for this dataset because it discusses the financials behind the Parks & Recreation 92A Construction Job. By placing all financial and logistical decisions within one record, this dataset makes navigating between city projects quite easy.
In the most basic sense, Wallack and Srinvasan defined ontology as the sharing of infrastructure and function in pursuit of the creation of a group, community, and/or perspective. Using this definition, my dataset’s ontology can be decidedly considered the pursuit of a fleshed out perspective on the city’s financial decisions about special projects. This dataset is grouped by data types in such a way that comparing multiple city project’s financials is the data’s primary function, and therefore its ontology stems from there.
Building off this, the point of view that would most fully embrace this ontology would most likely be the city’s financial advisor, or anyone involved or interested in the city’s financial wellbeing. The monetary focused spreadsheet obviously favors those who are similarly focused. The data will be most illuminating to those who are also interested in budgeting another special project for the city, and they can explore previously executed projects and determine if the city will approve of their project based on comparables. Another aspect of the dataset to consider is the “Source of Funds” datatype. This category would be very useful to those who are interested in the city’s budget, and perhaps would help a privatized company audit the city’s financials more easily.
The special funds report is a part of a larger narrative about the city’s overall budget, and this data set in particular attempts to reinforce the success and legitimacy of this narrative. A timeless and persistent task assigned to governing bodies is to provide the city with adequate public projects that cost within a total budget. By being as mindful and transparent as possible, the city controller is attempting to resolve this task and demonstrate to the public the completion of this task.
Understandably, those who are disinterested in the financial wellbeing of the city of Los Angeles are left out of this narrative. More importantly, the success of the project themselves, as in the success of adoption by the local community, or if the project accomplished its intended goal, is omitted from a financial report. Since these project provide no monetary income, the city controller decided to leave the projects subjective impact on a community off of the spreadsheet. This would be a very interesting aspect that I would like to add to this dataset, transitioning the data from solely that of monetary description to that of an actual digital humanities project. The success of city projects would be very helpful in this data because it can help the city what types of projects were the most successful in making a positive impact on the community, and therefore help them make more informed decisions when approving new city projects.