The course Innovating through Data prepares civil servants to develop data literacy and data skills. Referring to example cases, the course provides insight into the actual use of data practices for public management. This helps to manage expectations for smart cities and to recognize challenges and possible pitfalls. The course consists of practice tutorials on data collection, various methods of analysis, and visualization. A series of lectures provided by experts of the field cover topics such as open data, legal and ethical aspects, social media and the public, and data practices for public management.

In cooperation with our partner Ynformed, Data School can provide individually tailored course modules to suit them to the specific needs of municipal partners. The course might include hands-on data science tutorials for data analysts, a lecture for series increasing ‘data awareness’ for a more general audience, a special focus on civic participation and ethics, or a strategy-focused track for executive officers and upper management.

The course modules are developed in cooperation with Utrecht University, Data School and Ynformed. Tutors are senior staff from Data School and data scientists from Ynformed. Guest lecturers include among others Jenny de Boer (researcher at TNO), Joost Gerritsen (Legal Beetle, LL.M. (privacy lawyer)), Prof. Albert Meijer (public management, Utrecht University), Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Ph.D. (New Media & Digital Culture, Utrecht University), Paul Suijkerbuijk (open data consultant, ICTU and The Green Land).

General Topics

• Datafication of society
• Opportunities of open data for public management
• Politics of data, political data
• Public management in datapolis and smart cities
• Public value of soocial analytics
• Ethical and legal aspects
• Trends in data practices and data agenda’s

Focus sessions

Additional modules for improving specific aspects in innovating through data:

• Data science for public management
• Visual analytics
• Smart governance principles for executive officers in public management
• Social analytics

Practice assignments

Apply learnings directly to practice cases such as:

• Mapping societal sectors through combining various data sets
• Data-driven facility management of public space
• Accelerating smart city application
• Efficient use of reintegration interviews through data science
• Datafying public space