Putting People First in Data Quality: Feminist Data Ethics for Open Government Datasets

Open government information systems offer great potential for advancing civic life and democracy, but they also reflect and reinforce the biases and systematic inequalities faced by members of socially marginalized groups. We present results from a critical data modeling project that uses a data quality framework to examine open datasets published by police departments in order to understand how data modeling choices shape the social impact of these datasets. Using an arrest record dataset published by the Los Angeles Police Department as a case study, we present we present results detailing the representation of racial data and the presence of children in the dataset. We argue that current data quality frameworks for open government data are insufficient for critical data studies due to an orientation around institutional and computational interests. Incorporating feminist data ethics into data quality analysis provides an approach to data quality that centers people and communities. We propose a definition for data quality of open government datasets based on an ethics of care that centers the needs of vulnerable populations and accountability of institutions toward their communities.