US Census Business Builder App and the Opportunity Project

The Census Business Builder app and the Opportunity Project are two new tools from the US Census Bureau that make accessing and using data, and, we hope, making decisions from it, easier for the data analyst.  Both of these applications are good representatives of the trend we noted in our book and in this blog— the effort by government agencies to make their data more user-friendly.  While I would still like to see the Census Bureau address what I consider to be the still-cumbersome process of downloading and merging data from the American Community Survey and the Decennial Census with the TIGER GIS files, these two efforts represent a significant step in the right direction.  While GIS users may still not be fully satisfied by these tools, the tools should expand the use of demographic, community, and business data by non-GIS users, which seems to be sites’ goal.

The Opportunity Project uses open data from the Census Bureau and from communities along with a Software Development Kit (SDK) to place information in the hands of decision makers.  Because these decision makers are not likely to be familiar with how to conduct spatial analysis within a GIS, the appeal of this effort is for wiser decision making with the geographic perspective.  A variety of projects are already on the site to spark ideas, including Streetwyze, GreatSchools, and Transit Analyst.

The Census Business Builder is a set of web based mapping services that provides selected demographic and economic data from the Census Bureau.  You can use it to create customized maps and county and city level reports and charts.  A small business edition presents data for a single type of business and geography at a time, while the regional analyst edition presents data for all sectors of the economy and for one or more counties at a time.  These tools are based on Esri’s online mapping capabilities and offer some of the functionality of Esri’s Business Analyst Online.  Give them a try and we look forward to your comments below.

A map that I created using the Census Business Builder.