The ability to visualize data – where residents have health insurance, how close they are to a park or library, or who is going through foreclosure – has become prerequisite in citybuilding these days. It’s almost hard to imagine making policy decisions or launching initiatives without big data as a guide. And as Maggie McCullough, founder and president of PolicyMap, made clear in a presentation at the Lincoln Institute last month, the technology is getting better all the time.
PolicyMap, an online data and mapping tool that enables government, commercial, non-profit and academic institutions to access data about communities and markets across the U.S., is a project of The Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit community development financial institution that works across the Mid-Atlantic. The idea was simple: create an enormous online library of place-based data and make it available through a familiar map interface, empowering individuals and organizations with “location intelligence.”
A veteran in housing at local, state, and federal agencies, McCullough said she saw the need to present a wide array of data in an easy-to-understand and actionable format. Whether at the city level or at the Census, CDC, or FBI, information is “available but not accessible,” she said. Users can build maps based on 37,000 data indicators including demographic information, home sale statistics, health data, mortgage trends, school performance scores, unemployment rates, and crime statistics. The maps have been used for research, market studies, business planning and site selection, grant applications, and impact analysis – the latter especially important at a time when scarce resources need to be targeted for maximum impact. The applications are numerous, from siting health care centers, supermarkets, or neighborhood libraries, to tracking tax delinquencies and vacant lots.
The platform has a unique application as well in fostering interdepartmental coordination and strategic planning by sharing data across city agencies, McCullough said.
“It’s always better to be making decisions based on information, rather than based on intuition,” said Lincoln Institute President George W. “Mac” McCarthy, who promised future collaboration with PolicyMap on zoning and land use information, for example. “We want to bring data to practice and policy on the ground.”
The presentation, The Power of Data-Driven Decision-Making, part of the Lincoln Institute’s spring lecture series, can be viewed in its entirety here.
McCullough has worked for the City of Philadelphia's Office of Housing, Governor Casey of Pennsylvania, the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton Administration, and within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She joined The Reinvestment Fund in 2004, conducting housing-related research and analysis for several of its public sector and foundation clients. She holds a Masters Degree in Governmental Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and has a B.A. in economics and political science from St. Joseph's University.