DATA AND INFORMATION

The Diffident between Data and Information

The Diffident between Data and Information

Introduction

The generation and distribution of public information play a central role in the evolution of a strong democracy. Quality information is essential for effective governmental programs. The U.S. Constitution mandates a population census every ten years to apportion congressional representation. Land and water maps were necessary for defense, navigation, and planning the development of the frontier. By the late 1800s the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce were charged with acquiring, analyzing, and disseminating environmental data for agency use, promoting business, and educating citizens (Cole and Foster, 2000). With the discovery of the germ theory of disease in the late nineteenth century, states began mandatory testing of public water supplies.

Discussion

In the twentieth century, government rapidly expanded as the population grew and the economy was transformed from agricultural to industrial. Rapid increases in energy and chemical use were soon followed by widespread problems of pollution. Public concern led to increased regulation. From the 1970s onward major environmental laws were enacted to protect human health and the ecosystem. Each regulation contains specific data requirements that classify substances, and document location, utilization, and dispersal. The result is that numerous agencies now collect, process, and disseminate environmental information.

Evolution of Pollution Information Access

Date

Policy

Content

Access Process

1946

APA—"Need to Know"

Agency Record Series

In Person Copying

1966

FOIA—"Right to Know"

Agency Record Series

Written Request

1986

EPCRA—Community Response

Local Facility On-Site Chemical Storage

Written Local Request

1986

TRI—Toxic Release Inventory

Annual Chemical Releases to receiving media: air,water, surface, subsurface, offsite

Digital disk-facility, zip, municipality, county, state

1996

E-FOIA—Web Reading Room

Frequently Requested Data

Internet Search

1999

EPA Office of Environmental Information

Centralized "Envirofacts" Data Warehouse

Internet Interactive GIS

2001

Response to 9/11/01 Terrorist Attack

Maps and Data regarding dams, Power Plants, Water Supplies, and other potential Terrorist targets

Removed from Public Internet Access

Public data acquisition is shaped by four factors: legitimacy, resources, access, and will. Agencies can only collect data that meet a specific program objective, such as a metropolitan smog reduction program requiring automobile exhaust testing. Compiling data requires staff, equipment, and travel (Cole and Foster, 2000). Most monitoring programs rely on statistical sampling, and some have insufficient budgets to meet desired quality standards. Pollution often involves activities by private enterprise such as manufacturing. Governments must follow strict procedures before entering these facilities to collect data. Periodically, elected and appointed officials decide not to mandate data collection activities that are unpopular with constituent groups including businesses, farmers, or homeowners.

Information and Data Processing

Data processing is the input, verification, organization, storage, retrieval, transformation, and extraction of information from data. The term is usually associated with commercial applications such as inventory control or payroll. An information system refers to business applications of computers and consists of the databases, application programs, and manual and machine procedures and computer systems that process data. Databases store the master files of the business and its transaction files (Liu, 2000). Application programs provide the data entry, updating, and query and report processing. Manual procedures document the workflow, showing how the data are obtained for input and how the system's output is ...