The Transparency Stack: LA County's Open-Source Model for Public-Facing Analytics and Trust

Background

The Analytics Center of Excellence (ACE) within the Los Angeles County CEO’s office maintains partnerships with local criminal justice agencies, making information and methodology publicly accessible. This model is underpinned by an open-source mindset. 

Methods

The speakers will discuss ACE’s framework for government transparency, detailing how they use tools like Python for shared analysis, GitHub for collaborative code and methodology sharing, and the Justice Hub for public data dissemination.

Driven by the need to create meaningful, data-driven insights, the ACE team developed a standardized methodology for categorizing and describing criminal charges. Transparency was paramount: ACE relied on GitHub to share their methodology (developed in Python) with trusted partners, ensuring open collaboration and dialogue to maximize the fidelity of interpretation and reporting. 

Discussion

This standardized work now underpins critical analyses, specifically providing the foundation for robust reporting on rearrest rates within the population served by the Office of Diversion and Reentry (ODR) and enabling the quantification of delays within the court hearing process.