Every crime rate, every per capita statistic, every trend line in American public safety depends on something most people have never thought about: the data infrastructure underneath it. You only notice it when it starts to break down. Today’s guest, Denice Ross, has seen this breakdown firsthand and it has informed her career ever since.
Denice has served as the Chief Data Scientist of the United States under the Biden Administration, built the Police Data Initiative – an open data effort for police departments to voluntarily publish data – under the Obama Administration, and now runs the Data Policy Institute at the Federation of American Scientists.
In this conversation, we get into what data has actually changed under the current administration. We also talk about the Census as the denominator for everything, declining survey response rates, and how Denice got a group of police chiefs to open up their records over cupcakes at the White House.
Denice Ross is the Director of the new Data Policy Institute at the Federation of American Scientists, and the former Chief Data Scientist of the United States. In the Obama Administration, she co-led the Police Data Initiative which catalyzed law enforcement agencies to be more accountable by opening data about things like police use of force and citizen complaints. Denice worked in New Orleans (where we first met) for many years, before and after Katrina, first for a nonprofit data intermediary and then serving in the Landrieu administration, where she established the city’s open data initiative.
You can also catch it on the Jeff-alytics YouTube page where I’ll be posting episodes and video clips, so be sure to like and subscribe there if you’re so inclined!
And while you’re here, be sure to check out these other recent great episodes:
Michigan Economist Mike Mueller-Smith
Former ATF COO Thomas Chittum
Northwestern sociologist Andrew Papachristos
Vera President Insha Rahman
