City official skeptical over data-sharing proposal
Whether Pittsburgh can freely check the proverbial “accept” box on terms and conditions to share data with multiple companies drew skepticism from one city council member Wednesday.
A proposal would authorize two city departments — Mobility and Infrastructure along with
into agreements with “various entities, in order to receive data sets or access to data sets or visualization platforms that further the City’s ability to deliver services to residents.”
That means the city could get traffic-pattern data from Waze, a widely used GPS mobile application acquired by Google, Karina Ricks, director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, said at the council committee table.
Council members gave a nod of tentative approval except for Councilwoman Deb Gross, who is hoping her colleagues will reconsider their support before Tuesday’s final vote.
Ms. Gross called the proposal as it stands now a “carte blanche” to enter agreements with companies, bypassing council approval for each one.
“The way the legislation is written, it gives wide-open authorization to anybody at any time about anything,” she said.
But Ms. Ricks said breaking down the agreements — tech company by tech company, with each one receiving its own consideration in council — would be too cumbersome — up to four weeks for each agreement.
“We did not see this as being a big deal, I hate to say it. We’re really just talking about agreeing to terms and conditions as to how data would be used,” Ms. Ricks said. “These are really straightforward kinds of things.”
Those terms could include agreeing that the city wouldn’t resell data or reveal personal information — things the city is already barred from doing under its open-data policies adopted in 2014, Ms. Ricks said. The city’s Law Department would review each agreement, and each one would become a public document, she added.
So which companies does the city want data from?
Along with Waze, Ms. Ricks also mentioned getting data that Ford Motor Co. gathered when it provided a City of Tomorrow grant for a local transportation project. Another candidate may be Uber, which hasn’t shared any data with the city, she said.
The information would “really help us be a smarter city, plan our infrastructure and investments better,” she said, not the “horror stories” people often hear about stolen private information.