Deloitte, MIT and Datawheel Launch New 'Viz Builder' in Data USA 3.0, Enabling Users to Create Millions of New Visualizations

Data USA's 3.0 includes additional data sets, now capable of generating more than 2.5 million data visualizations

News provided by

May 01, 2019, 08:00 ET

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Deloitte, MIT and Datawheel released the third major update to Data USA, a data visualization platform with more than 400,000 monthly visits. This third update includes a "Viz Builder" tool, which allows users to build custom data visualizations using data from over a dozen U.S. public sources.

Along with this new feature, Data USA releases an improved, open source and scalable design.

Data USA is a free and open, publicly available platform that has become one of the main sources for Americans to access public data. The comprehensive visualization engine integrates, visualizes and distributes publicly available data pulled from multiple public sources, such as the U.S. Department of Education, Census Bureau, Department of Labor, and Department of Health and Human Services.

"The US government produces tons of valuable data every year; however, there are not many tools to make sense of it, fuse it, sift through it, and visualize it, making it inaccessible to all but the most skilled data scientists," said Matt Gentile, principal, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP and one of the creators of Data USA. "We're working to close that gap and make that data useful, relevant, and understandable, to those in the public sector, private sector, and the general population. This release will put relatable statistical evidence about the economy, the workforce, public health and education in the hands of everyone to drive basic decisions, such as what the best parts of the country to find a job as a nurse."

"We're very excited to unveil the newest installment of Data USA, along with all the new features that come with it," said Cesar Hidalgo, MIT Media Lab faculty and co-founder of Datawheel. "With this new update, Data USA continues to prove itself to be a flagship project showing what is next in this new wave of open data sites."

Data USA 3.0 includes more data sets, but also updated features that enable users to more easily visualize public data. Features like the data cart and visualization builder allow users to dig deeper into the data than ever before. For example, users can now visualize the number of people working in an industry that belong to a specific demographic, such as an ethnic group and gender as shown here. This level of depth was not possible in previous versions of Data USA.

The new visualization builder feature allows users to see data differently, creating a consolidated view of useful data on a wide range of topics, such as:

Drug overdose and death rates by county
Customer profiles across geographic regions
Black females working in the software industry by state
Admissions for universities in the Boston-metro area

Deloitte, MIT and Datawheel launched Data USA in April 2016 and have continued to add more data, modify and evolve the platform. In its first year, Data USA delivered more than 2.5 million sessions, with the majority of visitors coming from organic search.

About Deloitte
Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 and more than 5,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across the industry sectors that drive and shape today's marketplace to make an impact that matters — delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them.

About Datawheel
Datawheel is an award winning software company that provides end-to-end digital transformation solutions capable of integrating, distributing, and visualizing multiple streams of data. With multiple clients in the U.S., Chile, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Estonia, among others, Datawheel has become a leader in the development of digital transformation solutions for the public sector.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

SOURCE Deloitte