SCC-IRG: creating a community-focused data management platform

The National Science Foundation's Division of Computer and Network Systems awarded $1,499,864 to California State University Long Beach Research Foundation on September 1, 2025, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070) to develop a community-focused data management platform in Long Beach, California. The project, titled "SCC-IRG: Creating a Community-Focused Data Management Platform," runs through August 31, 2028, and aims to address the implementation gap between data privacy policy and practice by creating technological tools that empower residents to understand and control data collected about them through smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The platform employs a user-centric participatory design approach and will include an IoT mobile assistant, a privacy taxonomy supporting opt-in/opt-out choices, user authentication functionality, and a privacy dashboard enabling residents to review data collection activities.

The project incorporates two sub-awardees: the City of Long Beach Treasury Bureau, which provides project management, stakeholder coordination, community outreach, and integration support with city applications; and Carnegie Mellon University's H John Heinz III College, which contributes research and development expertise. The resulting data management platform is designed to scale across Long Beach's approximately 500,000 residents while remaining transferable to other municipalities, thereby advancing practical implementation of data governance practices and strengthening public trust in local government smart city initiatives.

Abstract

This multi-disciplinary project aims to promote better data governance practices and bolster trust through the development of a data management platform in long beach, calif. The platform is designed to support community access to information generated by smart city technologies. The project takes a user-centric participatory design approach to the development, evaluation and refinement of a platform designed to enable people to readily discover and learn about the data civic technologies collect about them as they engage in routine activities, such as using the bike share or passing by a traffic camera. The new platform will enable city residents to not only discover what data is collected about them but to also limit data practices with which they are not comfortable. The resulting data management platform is expected to help close the GAP between the discursive and material aspects of data privacy policy. Today, dozens of U.S. Cities have adopted data privacy guidelines?without being able to take practical and effective next steps to implement or enforce them. At full scale, the data management platform will make data practices associated with civic technologies more obtainable for long beach?s nearly 500,000 residents, potentially bolstering trust in local government. The project?s methodology and technical solutions are scalable and transferable to other cities. This project centers around the design, evaluation and refinement of an IOT mobile assistant that empowers people to exercise privacy choices. Part of this research will involve developing a simple taxonomy of privacy choices and data practices that enable city residents to specify ahead of time OPT-in/OPT-out choices, and develop support for authenticating users and functionality. The researchers will also develop a privacy dashboard that can help users review what data about them might have been collected over the past day or week. Formative evaluation and user testing will inform refinements to the mobile privacy assistant and other elements of the data management platform. The project?s methodology and technical solutions are scalable and transferable to cities beyond long beach. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.