The Future of Digging In

Assessment

Digging In is a user-oriented repository for food-producing community gardens. Digging In seeks to collect data from multiple publishers which requires an intuitive, flexible ingestion process. To fully utilize data in an evidentiary role for multiple users a moderated ingestion process was selected, so publishers can have assistance understanding why data must be highly controlled to convey meaning at a larger scale.

Future Directions

To further improve Digging In, development in both the front and back ends of the repository should be subject to continual revisions. After Digging In is launched via CKAN, initial usability tests should be run to ensure that users interact with the front-end as expected. Data publishers and consumers of data should continue to be differentiated in their information needs and expectancies.

Jurisdictional variables should be continually analyzed and emerging national standards adopted. A community’s connection with each other and the earth that produces their food, are indicators of a sustainable, resilient community. Moving from encouraging shape files to mandating their inclusion would enhance Digging In’s ability to provide detailed spatial information to data consumers but require additional steps in the mediation process. Other metrics and standards for analyzing community health should be incorporated into a strategy for interoperability and inclusion in community indices.