August 2019 Data Snapshot

Date:

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

In the August 2019 data snapshot, you will find news, updates, tips and other relevant information to Iowa's data program including:

New Playbooks for Creating Maps
Planning Dashboards
Socrata Gateway
Update Your User Profile
Better Charts & Maps
When Not to Trust a Number
Data Resources Available
State Data Plan

News, Updates & Tips

New Playbooks for Creating Maps

Maps are often a good way to present data, and are becoming easier to do on the State data portal. Below are five new IDOM playbooks that allow you to make use of county numbers, FIPS codes, GNIS codes and zip codes within your data:

These playbooks provide the means for creating region (i.e. chloropleth) maps by taking a code and associating it with the primary point of the city, county, township or zip code tabulation area. If you have full addresses in your data - even better, watch How to Geocode Addresses (Socrata). Now you should be all set to Create Maps with Point Data (Socrata).

Planning Dashboards

Before you begin implemeting a dashboard, flush out what you want the dashboard to convey, and have a clear idea of the information needed to make it meaningful. Not sure where to start? Take a look at the Dashboard Development Plan template. Laying out everything needed for your dashboard makes it a lot eaiser to implement on the platform.

Open Dashboard Development Plan Template (IDOM)

Socrata Gateway

Iowa is now part of the Socrata Gateway beta which is a new framework for connecting data from on-premise and cloud data sources directly to the internal data portal (mydata.iowa.gov) to create and automate your datasets. Learn more:

Update Your User Profile

It is highly recommended that anyone with an account on the State data portal update his or her user profile. The user profile allows others to know who owns the content published on the portal. The user profile allows you to set a display name, enter your first and last name, provide organizational information, profile pictures and descriptions.

More on User Profile Requirements (IDOM)

Better Charts & Maps

There are new features that have been implemented on the State data portal or will be rolling out soon to make charts and maps even better:

You can now create hierarchies and drill-downs in bar charts, column charts and pie charts. This allows citizens to click on a bar, column or slice of a chart and "drill in" to explore the data within that piece of the chart. By expanding the vertical filter dropdown menu, you can track selections made when drilling into the data.
You will soon have the ability to apply dependent filters by combining multiple filters that affect each other from parent filter to child filter, and so on.
You will soon have the ability to filter charts and maps by spatial lens regions (e.g. counties) to zero in on data located in specific locations.

Drill into Iowa Prison Admissions

When Not to Trust a Number

08/01/2019

More data has been collected in the last several years than in the entire span of human history. Chris DeSisto highlights when to be wary of data you are analyzing.