Data Driven Frederick center opens at Hood College

Apr. 7—Three massive television screens, together spanning nearly 20 feet of wall space, hang in the new Data Driven Frederick center at Hood College.

The center occupies a relatively small room, but David Gurzick, chair of the college's business school, has big plans for it. He waved his arms excitedly on Wednesday as he explained the project's goals and the technology that would make them possible.

College officials and donors hope the Data Driven Frederick center, which officially opened last week, will serve as a central hub for all kinds of information about Frederick County.

They envision an open repository of public-sector and private-sector data on demographics, economic development, transportation, health and more that can be combined and parsed by individuals and organizations.

"The potential for what this means for the socioeconomic future of Frederick County — of the region — is just unlimited," said Marlene Young, president of the Delaplaine Foundation. She and her husband made the lead gift toward establishing the center, and its full name honors them. Officially, it's the Michael S. and Marlene B. Grossnickle Young Data Driven Frederick Center.

The project received funding from many other sources, too, Young said, including the federal, state, county and city governments.

Gurzick, who is serving as the center's director, grew up in Detroit. He said the idea for Data Driven Frederick was partially inspired by Data Driven Detroit, which launched in 2008.

He also pointed to BCStat, a Baltimore County data repository, as an example of what Data Driven Frederick will eventually look like.

He described three separate goals for the project. The first, he said, was "low-hanging fruit": collecting data that's already publicly available and organizing it on one user-friendly platform.

Many government agencies, nonprofits and businesses in Frederick County are "progressive" and ambitious in their data-gathering policies, Gurzick said. But it can be hard for the average person to track that data down and make sense of it.

"You kind of have to be an expert," Gurzick said. "[You have] to know, 'This is who you talk to, this is how you get this data.' You have to have that zeitgeist."

Once a central hub exists, Gurzick said, users can combine separate data sets. For example, he said, a business looking to open a new location could toggle between economic data and educational data in a particular area of the county and figure out whether there is a qualified workforce in the area that makes the most financial sense.

Finally, Gurzick said, students at the college will be able to upload results from the research and surveys they conduct, creating even more data.

Students and the public will be able to use the data to answer their own questions about the community, he said.

The center will have six student interns. They are working with two sets of data to start out with, Young said: the Community Foundation of Frederick County's Human Needs Assessment and shared grants data from the "Frederick Funders" group, which represents the largest philanthropic data in the county.

The room where the center is housed in Rosenstock Hall is set up so students can collaborate there in person, but also so college officials and business leaders can lead high-tech virtual discussions.

It's equipped with AI-powered microphones and cameras that will automatically focus on whoever is speaking during a class or meeting.

The college implemented what it learned from its reliance on virtual learning during COVID-19, Gurzick said.

"This is our first room that we've created from scratch post-pandemic," he said.

Soon, he said, the center will upload its first public data sets.

Gurzick said the center would remain a "neutral broker of data" and present numbers in an unbiased way, describing its stance as "agnostic."

"You bring your questions, and we will give you the data to answer them in the ways that you see fit," he said. "And we will provide the statistical understanding, and democratize all of the data science and all of the technical stuff that's really hard to get access to these days."

Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek