By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

Data isn’t the end of debate. It’s the start. When I see a statistic like Somerville’s birth rate surpassing Massachusetts’ falling rate, or the city having a lower unemployment rate than the state and the nation but 85 percent of our workers leaving the city to go to their jobs, those aren’t answers. Rather, they beg questions: Why is our city’s birth rate growing? How do we have a low unemployment rate when most of our residents leave the city for work? We have to start by collecting the data—making decisions without data is like driving a car blindfolded. But once we have the data in hand, we have to ask the right questions, and asking the right questions means making that data available to everyone.

That’s why we’ve launched our new Key System Indicators website at somervillema.gov/dashboard that includes data ranging from maps of property values and crime in Somerville to graphs showing the rise in affordable homes or the factors in our Happiness Survey that predict whether someone will move or stay in our city, as well as much more data collected by our SomerStat department. And that’s just the start. We will be adding new data on an ongoing basis. And because the site is open source, it was developed at no cost beyond staff time by the city.

Making this data publicly available in a clear, transparent and easy to browse format makes it easier for the public to hold us accountable for our performance. If our schools’ test scores were to fall or crime rates were to rise, then residents would see where we have to focus our efforts. Or, as is currently the case, when our school’s growth scores soar over the past two years and our crime rate is down by one-third over the past five years, residents can have a window into the impact of our efforts.

Open data also makes it easier for the public to get involved in the decision-making process, undertaking their own analysis of the data and asking the questions that arise. Tapping into the talent, creativity and intelligence of our community is one of our core values. The answers to the challenges that face our community are not always obvious, but digging into data can reveal solutions that also sometimes run contrary to what we might think without the right data available.

Take road paving, for example. The first instinct is to apply our street repaving funds only to streets in the worst condition.  But while we do repair those streets, the data clearly shows that we save taxpayers’ money when we spend on preventative maintenance for streets that are in good condition as well. Every $1 spent on keeping a road in good condition avoids from $6 to $14 needed later to rebuild the same road if it has significantly deteriorated. That’s just one example of a counterintuitive solution, and when we make data open and transparent to the community, it can lead us to even more unexpected insights because the public can delve into the same facts and figures that city officials are using when making decisions.

Tools like our new Key Systems Indicator are important for sharing facts far, wide and fast, but like the data itself, these tools are not the end answer. Making city data open and transparent can’t replace informed discussion, which is why we also value face-to-face discussion in Somerville.

Innovation is not just a buzzword in our approach to data sharing, but an activity. It is how we reach out and interact with other city departments through SomerStat’s regular meetings, where numbers are crunched and allow our department leaders to make the best decisions through a collaborative process. It is how we reach out and interact with residents through our neighborhood-based ResiStat meetings, bringing and overview of topical data directly to you so you can then join us at more involved discussions to brainstorm with us helping us to innovate and address concerns and needs. Whether city department meetings or public ResiStat meetings, open data allows us to set the stage with what we know. Then we can ask, “What does that mean?” A ground-up decision-making process that’s data-driven is the best way to find creative answers that will help us reach our collective goals for our community.

Open data also helps us innovate by being part of a group of cities that collect and analyze data. Being in that pool of cities means that data collected elsewhere can also provide important info for Somerville, helping guide our policies to the best practices and results found elsewhere. And by making data open to the public, civic media innovators can take our open data and create useful applications, like the MBTA making its data to the public resulting in mobile apps that let you know when the next bus or subway train is arriving. With Somerville’s data out there, those same innovators could create applications beneficial to the city and its residents.

The civic engagement in Somerville never ceases to leave me in awe of the passion, intelligence and creativity in our city. You are an integral part of how we operate, and I hope you’ll keep it up, checking out the new website, attending ResiStat meetings and helping us find ways to be leaner, more efficient and deliver the services that you deserve.