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** About This Site **


General Purpose

To create and operate a multi-disciplinary database to serve Marin's citizens, service providers and public agencies.

Increase the accessibility and reliability of information available in Marin County for service delivery and public policy decisions.

Overview

This WebSite is being created through a grant from the Marin Community Foundation. We plan to collect and link to basic, time-series, public and private primary data about Marin County. The data should be as current as possible, accurate, and relevant, and should include "metadata" -- documentation about the data itself and its sources. It should be possible to extract and manipulate the data.

We hope to establish a process whereby data routinely created by those sources are routed to this site, and posted to the pages and data files. Some data will be displayed in standard HTML pages, but other data will be provided in "Excel Spread Sheets" or Access Databases. It will be possible for those entire data sets to be down-loaded by users and utilized on their own systems.

A comprehensive demographic data base may also be developed in SQL, that will be set up for user queries.

The project now being started is a "Pilot Project" with a limited amount of funding. As we progress we will be able to determine better just how many of the project goals can be accomplished, and where to best focus our efforts.

Data to be Collected

Data for these pages will be collected from several sources, each with different general categories of data:

  1. Crime
  2. Employment
  3. Enrollment
  4. Health
  5. Housing
  6. Marriage Licenses
  7. Population
  8. Property
  9. Substance Abuse
  10. Veteran's Affairs
  11. Vital Statistics
  12. Voter Registration


Level of Detail

Data for these pages will be collected for a variety of geographical areas. Those may include:

  1. Marin County
  2. Marin Cities and Towns
  3. Marin Schools (Public and Private)
  4. Census Tracts
  5. Zip Codes
  6. Election Precincts
  7. Legislative Districts
  8. etc. ...
  9. and, the State of California, other Counties and Cities (for purpose of comparison).


Users of the Data

There are several different groups of users that we hope will find this site useful:

  1. General Public
  2. Policy Makers
  3. The "Media"

  4. Funding Sources who want to target and evaluate their programs.
  5. Funded Program Staff who want to evaluate their own success.
  6. People or Businesses who are considering moving to or within Marin County.
  7. Research Analysts doing general studies about Marin County.

Original products described in "MIDAS" Statistical Data Program

Marin County IST will contract for a data analyst to collect statistical data from over forty-five different Marin, state and federal agencies. This is the first step of a multi-year project to collect and maintain data for community leaders and program planners. Part of this project will be to assemble a representative group of cross agency staff into a "Program Evaluation and Data Collection" field of interest.

There will be eight products from this effort. All of the products will be posted on the MIDAS server:

  1. An organized collection of data in report from from up to 45 different agencies.
  2. Data dictionary for each data item or cell on a report. Include ownership, frequency of update and other characteristics.
  3. A conceptual data model showing the relationships among high level data entries identified in the data dictionary.
  4. A spreadsheet showing if and how the data from different agencies can be compared (age, sex, race, geographical area...).
  5. An inventory of automated and manual system capabilities with special attention paid to data export functionality and network access.
  6. Scope and requirements analysis of data needs for interested community leaders and planners. The WEB data will be used to assess interest and usability.
  7. Analysis of the best technical methods for automating the data on the server on an on-going basis.
  8. Analysis of the costs and benefits for maintaining the WEB data.

While the data analyst will work on contract under the Marin County IST department, this person must gather requirements and work closely with all agencies to succeed in this project.

Planning Committee

The following people have provided input in the development of this plan. Each is involved with one of the primary data sources or with the basic provision of related funds or services:

  1. Roy Bateman Community Development (415-499-6698)
  2. Bill Cyders Information Systems and Technology (bcyders@marin.org)
  3. Mike Groza Marin Community Foundation (mgroza@midas.org)
  4. Dave Hill Information Systems and Technology (dhill@marin.org)
  5. Lance Lowrie Health and Human Services (415-499-3712)
  6. Kirsten Michener Marin Community Foundation (kmichen@midas.org)
  7. Jim Oriel Marin County Office of Education (415-499-5803)
  8. Tom Peters Health and Human Services (415-499-6396)
  9. Mark Reisenfeld Community Development (415-499-6269)
  10. Fred Vogler Community Development (fvogler@marin.org)
  11. Maurice Wolohan Marin Housing Authority (mha@inreach.com)


Performance Monitors

Data will be collected from the beginning to help us evaluate our success, and determine direction and priorities.

  1. Statistics will be collected on the number of "Hits" to the demographic pages, and growth will be monitored.
  2. Librarians will be notified of our existence, and polled as to current and desired data sets.
  3. Users will be asked to "Sign On" to the site, and provide input to what was found and what is desired at the site.

    Visit the Marin Community Foundation WebSite.
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    Site Last Modified: April 16, 1999