jen q. public volume 1
TRANSCRIPT
The Diary of
Jen Q. PublicVol. 1
Once upon a time…
There lived a woman in a peculiar town. A place where analytics is used to tackle tough problems.
This is the story of….
Jen Q. Public
Dear analytics diary,
Something really interesting is happening these past few nights. It has been eerily silent with not even a siren in the distance. Even the rats are still. It’s as if everyone knows that the ever-present Lieutenant Analytics is on high alert ensuring the scene never becomes a crime scene. It made me wonder “How are the police doing? Are crime rates down? Is analytics really helping the force?"I overheard my neighbor saying, “I’m not one to gossip, but I heard a Lieutenant on the news say that their Chief had reduced violent crime rate by 39 percent!" Amazed, I tiptoed away to do my own digging.Sure enough, the city…
April 23, 2015, 10:55 p.m.
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Dear diary:
Last night I had a really strange dream. The Social Services office asked me to pinky swear that a claim I was filing was accurate. “Well, yeah.” Did they think I looked like someone who would file a false claim? It took a whole lot of deep breaths to just smile and nod and raise my crooked pinky.Do government agencies really rely on the pinky swear to validate accuracy of claims and minimize abuse? Of course not, that was just a really weird dream. But program integrity is a real problem, and government social programs lose a great deal of money to errors, waste and abuse. These agencies typically are…
May 1, 6:38 a.m.
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Dear diary,
I received three graduation invitations this week. While I’m excited to watch these young adults receive their degrees, I can’t help but wonder if Johnny, the young man who works at the convenience store on the corner, would ever go back to college. He had such a promising future, yet he dropped out just after the first year.In the New York Times just a couple weeks ago, David Leonhardt shared that “dropout rates typically hover around 50 percent.” That’s really high. Carly Stockwell, content director at College Factual, also shared that only 59 percent of students graduate from college. The burning question then, is what…
May 7, 2015, 8:07 p.m.
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Dear diary,
It's been raining cats, dogs, elephants and zebras—the entire zoo, actually. One of the staffers even came in "ready" for a flood. But I will take the rain. Though the tornado sirens went off last weekend, we were spared any major damage in our neighborhood. Judging from CNN news reports, however, many people weren’t as lucky and are still reeling from the more than 70 tornadoes that touched down this past weekend, leaving death and destruction in their wake. I can only begin to imagine the task at hand and the resources needed by emergency management crews as they help bring back some semblance of normalcy to the central…
May 14, 9:01 p.m.
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Dear diary:
The Internet and advanced technologies such as live, streaming apps and wi-fi in planes have created exciting possibilities, but these advances also pose security and data-overload challenges. We do live in scary times.For instance, I have been counting down the days to my next vacation since last year’s vacation. However, I would be lying if I said that the recent report about in-flight wi-fi being susceptible to hackers was not giving me second thoughts about air travel. Then, just this week a cybersecurity researcher claimed he had managed to take control of a plane mid-flight through…
May 21, 11:21 p.m.
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Dear diary,
You hear a lot of “smarter this” and “smarter that” discussion these days about smarter care, a smarter planet and smarter cities. Recently, Bernard Marr wrote about how the Internet of Things creates smarter cities. Smarter cities are now managing traffic patterns, parking, lighting and even garbage trucks that know when garbage is ready for disposal.Smarter everything is great, but what I’m really concerned about is not just a smarter city but also a safer city. The 10 o’clock news was chock full of criminal activity tonight, just like every other night. Perpetrators are seemingly always finding a way to defy...
May 28, 10:58 p.m.
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