Blog Posts

In case you missed it, we're writing a monthly newsletter. Here's the December edition. We use our newsletters to share special subscriber-only content, and we encourage you to sign up to receive them in the future......

One of the things we've noticed through our work as a data intermediary is that people usually don't talk to each other about how they are using or want to use data. Data publishers don't often have opportunities to listen to data users. Data publishers don't have a way to talk to one another, especially across institutions. User-user interactions are ad-hoc (at best). As a result, users aren't ab...

A few weeks ago, my UCSUR colleague Liz Monk and I attended the Fall, 2015 partner meeting of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) in Dallas, Texas. NNIP is a community of practice for data intermediaries organized by the Urban Institute. NNIP has participation from over 30 cities and a growing number of organizations with a national scope. It’s a great place to talk shop and le...

We're pleased to have published the Allegheny County Property Assessment Data User Guide. This guide is a collaboration between the Regional Data Center and staff at Allegheny County's Office of Property Assessments. This is first of many Data User Guides here at the Regional Data Center. Our goal is to help people make the most of open data by taking the level of data documentation up to eleven....

Did you know that the Carnegie Museum of Art is holding a hackathon on open collections data the weekend of November 13-15, and you're invited. The museum is also partnering with Code & Supply on parties to celebrate. It now looks like the event is a sellout - We're interested to see what people build using the data. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hackathon-reimagining-a-collection-tickets-1908384...

There are many different models communities use to run their open data portals. Some opt for a software as a service solution, relying on a vendor to host data and manage the technology. Several vendors are in this space, some offering a proprietary solution, and others built on open source software. Some communities choose to host their open data portal internally using open source software, or e...

We're seeking a software developer to work with us at the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center. This is an exciting opportunity to work on a very interesting project, and the candidate will help to manage our open data portal, design ETL processes to automate data publishing, and build tools that use data. More details can be found on the job posting on the University of Pittsburgh's Office o...

For over ten years, the University Center for Social and Urban Research has served the Pittsburgh area as an information intermediary. Information intermediaries help people find and use information to improve the communities they call home. The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center is one in a long line of initiatives of the University Center in this intermediary role. From 2005-2014, the Cen...