Citistat Being Data Driven

¶ … Driven Decision Making in Baltimore City Government This paper looks at the methods used by the CitiStat program to collect data to be used by the government in an attempt to answer the following questions: What collection strategies or sensors are used to collect data, which ensures the integrity of the collected data as well as its relevance to Baltimore City Government? Further, the paper identifies the mechanisms employed to ensure that the data collected is viable through reviewing web articles and detailed research on the variables.

In addition, the researchers and data collector should be aware of the concerns by individuals and should also be sensitive to their wishes without siding with any group or influencing their roles (Edwards, 2009) The paper will adhere to the strict code of conduct and make a conclusion on whether City-state program and method of collecting data is in order and upholds the integrity of the data. Data collection strategy used by CitiStat Every department will have a different strategy on collecting data on various aspects.

The reason being, each department is differently structured and may have unique features. In addition, it may be necessary to source some of the data from the public because the decision made based on the data collected will impact them directly (Baltimore CitiStat, 2010). Regardless of the method used by each department in collecting data, the following steps must be followed. Evaluate the existing strategies in line with CitiStat program, including means used to access the data. A detailed description of municipality field census.

A detailed report on approaches used to enumerate, to cost and carry out evaluation based on the governments financial and human resources capabilities After choosing the approach and the methods used to collect data, stratification methods of sampling must be designed. Independent stakeholders or the public to be involved in testing the methods chosen.

In complying with the above steps, Citistat has come up with a number of strategies to use in collecting data, which can be used by the government in its effort to achieve its vision of building better schools, having safer streets, having a growing economy, securing a stronger neighborhood, having an innovative, proactive government, and having a generally cleaner city. By having this program, the government will have attained its goal of being innovative.

It is expected that other governments will follow by developing programs that are similar to CitiStat program (Baltimore CitiStat, 2010; Perez & Rushing, 2007). Major categories implemented by CityStat in collecting data These are the efficient and standard means of collecting data and information from the public. Quantitative methods These are data collection methods that rely on random sampling as well as structured methods of data collection depending on the expected responses. The result obtained using this strategy of data is easy to analyze, compare and arrive at a generalized conclusion.

Each department in the city is assigned a unique phenomenon of interest that concurs with the departments' goal of testing the hypothesis derived from the theory that led to specific data collection. According to the program, it is recommended that the departments get a feel of what the majority are doing. This is a better way of collecting data because it factors in the idea that the city is very large and the researcher may, hence not be able to collect data from each citizen (Data collection Methods, n.d.).

One of the best methods that have shown to bear results is the interview method. However, the questions used by the researcher should be more structured and the researcher should ask a standard set of questions (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001) First, the interviewer should use the one-on-one interview to enable him to gauge the participant personally, in order to get more details on the information received. It also reduces the tendency of the respondent to give inaccurate and false information especially when answering questions on public services.

In fact, this is a major challenge facing CitiStat as far as data collection is concerned. The success of the program initiated by CitiStat is based on getting relevant information most economically and in a short period of time. A special ephone *** is given to the public through the city's official website. The public is free to call and report any issue they feel requires immediate attention. Such issues may include even mundane ones like street-light breakdown.

When it happens, the people within the said area should be able to report the issue using the number. If this happens, the city should be able to solve the issue within 4 days. The researcher should be able to follow up on the matter raised by the public to prove whether the program is working satisfactorily. As technology advances on a large scale globally, CitStat is making use of it by creating web-based questionnaires as a way of collecting data from the public.

This offers a rather inexpensive means of gathering important data from the public. Among the advantages of this strategy is that it ensures that only valuable data is being gathered compared to interviewing. A computer needs literacy and as such, only those people with pressing issues can write mails to the program. There is however one drawback of this method; people without computers will be unable to air their views.

There are a number of cases where someone in a hurry to complete the request may end up giving poor information. Obviously, this method of collecting data is faster and more conventional as compared with paper-pencil questionnaires that CitiStat program rarely uses (Williams, 2007). Qualitative data collection technique Qualitative data collection techniques and quantitative methods are very similar. The only difference between them is that the former is more detailed than the latter. Often, CitiStat applies qualitative methods following collection of data from quantitative technique.

This is because qualitative means those that comprise of interviews and questionnaires, and provide an impact evaluation of the initial recorded data by the program researchers performing lucid follow-ups (Williams, 2007). Qualitative data collection enhances the quality of the survey. It achieves this by strengthening the survey questionnaires' design and expanding or simplifying the findings of quantitative evaluation (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). When it comes to the depth of information gathered, qualitative data collection methods and quantitative methods differ greatly in spite of the fact that they are similar.

Normally, common features that include open-ended questions for questionnaire data collection characterize them; Thus making it possible to provide a definite, instead of general answer to a question. In spite of the fact that questionnaires to be performed are available, they are mainly dependent on interactive interviews, where a researcher can not only interview a.