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How Local Governments Can Rebuild Trust Through Better Data
In an era marked by misinformation, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and growing politicization, the disappearance of public data has left local governments facing unprecedented challenges in making fair, effective, and trusted decisions. A recent webinar co-hosted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and the University of Virginia School of Data Science brought together scholars and practitioners to explore how a data justice lens can strengthen evidence-based policymaking and re-center community voices in democratic governance.
The conversation opened with reflections from Bev Wilson, a professor in the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Drawing on the ICMA Code of Ethics, Wilson emphasized the responsibility of public managers to provide “facts and professional advice,” while also questioning what counts as evidence in practice. Effective policymaking, he argued, hinges on two fundamental questions: “Why should I believe you?” and “Why should I care?”
Trust, Wilson said, depends on transparency, verifiability, and responsiveness to real-world outcomes. Relevance, meanwhile, requires shared values, inclusion, and meaningful opportunities for participation.
Wilson noted that evidence alone has often fallen short in producing durable policy solutions, particularly in areas such as climate change. Instead, he advocated pairing evidence with values. “Values plus evidence is a fruitful recipe for responsible practice and public service,” he said. This shift toward humility and empathy, he suggested, can help policymakers find common ground with communities that may otherwise feel excluded or unheard.
Wilson noted that evidence alone has often fallen short in producing durable policy solutions, particularly in areas such as climate change. Instead, he advocated pairing evidence with values. “Values plus evidence is a fruitful recipe for responsible practice and public service,” he said. This shift toward humility and empathy, he suggested, can help policymakers find common ground with communities that may otherwise feel excluded or unheard.
One practical pathway Wilson highlighted was the growth of open government data. Over the past decade, many local governments have adopted open data portals to improve transparency, accountability, and service delivery. He pointed to examples from Louisville, Kentucky, including a public dashboard tracking homeless encampments as part of a broader support strategy. Performance analytics dashboards, such as those used in Alexandria, Virginia, further demonstrate how quantitative indicators can help track progress toward community goals. Open data, Wilson said, can function as both an input and an output of evidence-based policymaking, helping address both why the public should believe and why it should care.
Wilson also underscored the importance of integrating local knowledge alongside technical models. An ongoing project in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, conducted with colleagues in engineering and environmental sciences, combines environmental modeling of green infrastructure benefits with participatory mapping and resident surveys. This mixed-methods approach surfaced insights that institutional stakeholders alone had missed, including residents’ limited concern about heat relative to other issues and their unfamiliarity with green infrastructure as a solution. While more time- and resource-intensive, the approach revealed critical questions about where benefits such as flood mitigation and heat reduction are most needed.
Building on these themes, Jess Reia, an assistant professor of data science and public policy and co-lead of the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, expanded the discussion to data justice in the context of automation, artificial intelligence, and citizen-generated data. Reia described growing pressure on governments to adopt big data tools and automated decision systems, even as concerns about data quality, bias, privacy, and transparency remain unresolved. Citizen-generated data, they said, can help fill gaps left by official statistics, but only if governments develop the capacity to integrate it responsibly.
Reia illustrated these challenges through their work on nighttime governance, an emerging field focused on how cities function after dark. From health care and transportation to cultural life and economic activity, the “night” encompasses complex and often competing needs. Reia described projects in cities such as Washington, D.C., Mexico City, and Montreal, where traditional datasets are sparse and mixed methods and community partnerships are essential. Drawing on their experience as a night councilor in Montreal, Reia emphasized the importance of multistakeholder collaboration, public consultation, and presenting data in forms decision-makers can readily use.
A third perspective came from Terence Johnson, an assistant professor of data science who described himself as an “evidence maker,” with extensive experience leading randomized controlled trials funded by organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. Johnson challenged narrow definitions of what constitutes legitimate evidence. “Whose interests were the focus here? Whose evidence is considered legitimate?” he asked. As federal datasets become less reliable or disappear altogether, he warned, local governments will need new ways to generate credible evidence from their own operations.
Johnson offered a practical strategy: using the unavoidable scarcity embedded in government decision-making as a source of insight. By tracking outcomes for individuals who fall just above and just below program eligibility cutoffs, governments can estimate policy impacts without costly experiments, a method known as regression discontinuity. “You might already have data like this sitting around,” he said, urging practitioners to be more intentional about record-keeping and learning from everyday decisions.
Across all three perspectives, a shared message emerged: strengthening democratic decision-making does not mean abandoning rigor, but expanding how evidence is understood to include values, lived experience, and community knowledge. As one speaker noted, “You and your community might be one of the best sources of evidence for the kinds of questions that you face.” By embracing this broader view, local governments can rebuild trust, design more responsive policies, and ensure that data truly works for people.
