Advisory Concerning the City of Chicago’s Data Quality

Executive Summary

The City of Chicago’s operations increasingly rely on collecting and utilizing high-quality data. Through our audit and investigation work, the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General has observed many issues impacting data objectivity, utility, and integrity. The inconsistent quality of the City’s data hinders it from effectively allocating resources, measuring performance, and achieving objectives. To support the chief data officer’s role in improving decision-making and management through data analysis, we summarize our observations below.

Local governments fulfill a wide variety of missions by managing people, capital assets, and money. These tasks generate large amounts of data, which the CDO helps City departments understand and use. In recent years, governments have ramped up their use of data to improve resource allocation, measure success, and increase efficiency. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development found that governments that actively use their data improve their ability to develop better long-term plans by anticipating constituent needs and trends affecting operations. Governments that actively use data can evaluate the success of public service delivery and engage in continuous improvement. Accordingly, data is a key strategic governmental asset. Yet, data can only serve its purposes if it is accurate and reliable.