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Public Data and Stewardship

This Hackathon uses public environmental data so teams can investigate, build, and communicate within 1.5 days. Public access is useful, but it does not settle questions of representation, interpretation, authority, or action.

This guide adapts the OLC Climate Resiliency and Digital Sovereignty Learning Lab framing for the OASIS workflow Jones, 2026. The source curriculum remains the authority for its own guidance.

The public-data boundary

Accessible ≠ interpretable ≠ actionable

Boundary Practical question
Accessible Can we obtain, inspect, and analyze the data under its stated terms?
Interpretable What do the observations actually measure, and what claims can they support?
Actionable Is there adequate context, relationship, review, evidence, and authority for a real decision?

A federal climate index, stream gauge, remote-sensing product, or model output can offer important regional evidence while omitting locally relevant conditions, relationships, histories, experiences, or knowledge. Treat those omissions as part of the analysis.

Three checkpoints

1. Before choosing the question

  • Who helped frame the question?
  • Whose priorities does it reflect?
  • Who might frame it differently?
  • Do available public data fit the question, or are they only convenient?

2. While representing the evidence

  • Who produced and transformed the data?
  • What place, time, population, or process does one value represent?
  • What is averaged, modeled, classified, or missing?
  • Could another form of knowledge change the interpretation?
  • Should the evidence change the original question?

3. Before sharing or continuing

  • Who could be affected by the interpretation?
  • Who is absent from the work?
  • Who should help frame, interpret, or review a continuation?
  • Is every item appropriate for public GitHub?
  • Does the wording imply consultation, approval, authorization, partnership, or endorsement that has not occurred?

Unresolved answers are legitimate outcomes when they are recorded clearly.

Safe public-sharing practice

Do not publish:

  • Culturally sensitive knowledge
  • Protected or precise sensitive locations
  • Private, restricted, or community-controlled data
  • Personal information without appropriate consent
  • Stewardship records meant for a different approved location
  • Claims of community, Tribal, OLC, or organizational approval that have not occurred

When proposing future involvement, name roles or perspectives and explain what they should help frame or interpret. Do not present a person or organization as a collaborator, reviewer, or authority unless that relationship is real and can be stated publicly.

What this exercise does not certify

Completing these prompts does not establish sovereignty compliance, community fit, ethical acceptability, scientific validity, consent, review, permission, approval, or authority. It is a short-event reflection and documentation aid. A community-specific continuation may require different evidence, relationships, governance, review, and decision-making processes.

References