New in January: Business data analysis, data events, and more!

Published: Wed, 01/19/22

January 19, 2022

In case you missed it - Our 2021 Report!

As CTData worked virtually in 2021, we continued to make data accessible, expand the data capacity of people and organizations, help build a more robust data infrastructure in Connecticut, and provide analysis for the state to make data-informed decisions. This hard work and dedication has given us a lot to celebrate about this past year even in the midst of the challenge.

Here are just a few highlights:

We welcomed three new staff members
We were accepted into the Social Enterprise Accelerator program offered by the Hartford Foundation.
We partnered on a seminal report, Essential Equity. Women, Covid-19, and Rebuilding CT
Our Hartford Data Collaborative initiative is also a partner in the North Hartford Ascend Pipeline project, a five-year federally funded award starting in January 2022.

For a full view of our year in review, click here.

New Hartford Data Collaborative Site!

The revamped Hartford Data Collaborative (HDC) website is now live! Please visit our new HDC page to learn more about what we do, our member network and leadership structure, current HDC projects, and how you can connect with us to request integrated data. As our work grows and expands, so will our web presence. Your feedback and suggestions to continuously improve our webpage are always welcome. Visit our webpage and stay tuned for more exciting HDC news!

Business Data

We recently explored and analyzed Connecticut's business registration data within the last decade and discovered business registrations increased 20% in 2021 after a decade averaging 5% growth. From January 2019 through November 2021, 15% of new businesses identified as woman-owned, 13% as minority-owned, and 1% as veteran-owned. In our recent op-ed in the CTExaminer, our director Michelle Riordan- Nold wondered: "Will the accelerating growth in new business registrations continue in 2022?" You can read more of our in-depth analysis here.

PUMAs

We want to say thank you to all of the people who attended our January 5th Connecticut PUMA Delineation Input event as well as those who sent in ideas and feedback in other ways. We believe we have created PUMA boundaries that will be useful. The next step is that we will submit these to the Census Bureau. More info will be coming later this year.

Equity in Data 2022: Looking Ahead

The Equity in Data Community of Practice ended the year on a high note. Our final session on December 21 was filled with lively discussion, interesting ideas, and data nerds! We discussed our key takeaways from our previous session, the Do No Harm with Data Viz session of the CTData Conference 2021 and talked about what we’d like to do as a group in 2022.

We are a group of data users in Connecticut who are supporting one another as we work toward more equitable data practices. We focus on racial equity explicitly but not exclusively.

Some of the topics we talk about include:

How can we make sure we don't make certain groups invisible through how we disaggregate our data?
How can we learn to focus our attention on the strengths, rather than the deficits, of groups we are seeking to serve or support?
How can we learn from the people who we hope will benefit from our products or services about what their data means to them?
How can we help the institutions that we are part of to be trustworthy so that people will trust us with their information/data?

During the Basics of Data Literacy, you will learn how to evaluate whether the data you use or generate is of high-quality, how to evaluate the quality of data other people create, and how to understand more of the data that is being presented to you. You will be able to take when you leave the workshop to improve your own data work. You will leave this workshop:

Understanding what “data literacy” is, and why it is important for making good decisions.
Being more critical consumers & creators of data conclusions from data.
Being more careful “appliers” of data interpretations.
Having a better understanding of data literacy & ways to immediately change how participants engage with data.

CT is working to engage high schools in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), and looking for schools to participate in data collection in the spring semester. This survey gives insight into topics such as unintentional injuries and violence, substance use, physical activities, among other important topics. You can explore past CT YRBS data here, and contact Celeste Jorge (find contact information at the bottom of this page) to have your school system engage with this important effort.