The benefits of open data for helping to address societal problems and strengthen communities are well recognized, and unfortunately previous studies found that smaller communities are often excluded from the current data ecosystem because of existing technological, technical, cognitive, and practical barriers. This study aims to investigate the process of communitiesʼ data use for community development and decision‐making—focusing on the opportunities and challenges of data for communities. From the interviews with 25 staff from community‐based organizations (CBOs) in nine small, medium, and large cities in the United States, the findings of this study describe dataʼs role in supporting communitiesʼ development while reporting several major challenges that hinder CBOs data use: difficulty accessing data, limitations of open data (un‐local nature, excluding essential data from being open), limited data capacity (especially in data literacy skills), and difficulties using and accessing existing data infrastructures. Our findings suggest opportunities for addressing these challenges, particularly by creating educational programming, building partnerships within data ecosystems, and bringing community voices forward in current data ecosystems, which are critical to realizing dataʼs potential for all citizens.

中文翻译：

---

迈向社区包容性数据生态系统：基于社区的组织开放数据的挑战和机遇

开放数据在帮助解决社会问题和加强社区方面的好处是众所周知的，不幸的是，之前的研究发现，由于现有的技术、技术、认知和实践障碍，较小的社区往往被排除在当前的数据生态系统之外。本研究旨在调查社区数据用于社区发展和决策的过程——关注社区数据的机遇和挑战。通过对美国九个大中城市社区组织 (CBO) 的 25 名员工的采访，本研究的结果描述了数据在支持社区发展方面的作用，同时报告了阻碍 CBO 数据使用的几个主要挑战：难以访问数据，开放数据的局限性（非本地性质，排除开放的基本数据）、有限的数据容量（尤其是在数据素养技能方面）以及使用和访问现有数据基础设施的困难。我们的研究结果为解决这些挑战提供了机会，特别是通过创建教育计划、在数据生态系统内建立伙伴关系以及在当前数据生态系统中提出社区声音，这对于实现所有公民的数据潜力至关重要。