HCC: Medium: Seamful Design: Prototyping and Evaluating Collaborative Tools for Civic Data

该项目将为设计公民数据系统开发一个创新框架。该框架支持知识生产，包括政策、治理和宣传，并允许动态联盟进行协作，并随着时间的推移调节边界。在公民组织的生态系统中，有不同的责任或行动模式。使命驱动型组织在社区中行动，解决当地问题。市政府提供服务并管理城市的运作。政策制定者制定目标和规则，以实现长期优先事项。在这种环境下，数据已成为知识产生和共享的关键材料。然而，通常通过一种适合应用程序的方法来努力实现数据和数据系统的集成和互操作性，这与公民工作的实际情况根本不匹配。有必要重新审视协作在公民工作中意味着什么的基本假设。本研究将开发一种设计公民数据系统的新方法，通过推进无缝概念作为理解支持组织、技术、人员和包括公民工作的协商结果的生态系统的基础。接缝认识到在非常不同的组织之间的数据共享中存在中断和不一致的现实，并且接缝提供了一种方法，以更容易映射到公民实体如何协同工作的方式，阐明对差距和整合的流动断言。这需要一种独特的公民数据系统设计方法，不同于公民技术话语中常见的无缝愿望，其中技术集成和互操作性消除了社会和组织边界。该研究遵循三个核心研究链的迭代循环：(1)建立经验基础和初始原型系统，以回答核心研究问题；(2)在组织中放置单个工具，研究每个工具如何在以问题为中心的联盟中管理行动和问责制；(3)关注如何将研究结果转移和推广到项目的特定研究地点之外。这项研究的结果将产生公民数据工作的数据上下文和知识生产的分类，连接特定数据系统架构和人类交互技术的原型，以实现基于实践的接缝的基于联盟的公民工作，以及作为以人为本的公民技术基础的接缝设计的理论解决方案。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will develop an innovative framework for designing civic data systems. The framework supports knowledge production, including policy, governance, and advocacy, and that allows for dynamic coalitions to collaborate and moderate boundaries over time. In the ecosystem of civic organizations there are distinct accountabilities or modes of actions. Mission-driven organizations act in their communities to address local issues. Municipal governments provide services and manage the operations of the city. Policy makers set goals and rules to achieve long-term priorities. Across this environment, data have become a crucial material in how knowledge is produced and shared. However, striving for integration and interoperability of data and data systems, often through a one-size-fits-app approach, is a fundamental mismatch for how civic work actually happens. There is a need to reexamine the base assumptions of what collaboration means in civic work. This research will develop a novel approach to designing civic data systems by advancing the notion of seamfulness as a foundation for understanding supporting the ecosystem of organizations, technology, people, and negotiated outcomes that comprise civic work. Seamfulness recognizes the reality of interruptions and misalignments in data sharing between very different organizations, and seams offer a way to articulate the fluid assertion of gaps and integration in ways that more readily map to how civic entities work together. This requires a distinct approach to civic data system design, different than the aspirations of seamlessness common to civic technology discourse where technical integration and interoperability obviate social and organizational boundaries. The research follows an iterative cycle over three core research strands (1) build an empirical foundation and initial prototype systems to answer core research questions, (2) situate individual tools across organizations, looking at how each manages action and accountability within the issue-focused coalition, and (3) focus on how to transfer and generalize the findings beyond the specific research sites of this project. The outcome of this research will result in a taxonomy of data contexts and knowledge production for civic data work, prototypes that link specific data system architecture and human-interaction techniques to enable coalition-based civic work across practice-based seams, and theoretical resolution to seamful design as a foundation for human-centered civic technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.