Opening MTA’s Operating Budget: Flattening Hierarchies w/ Python’s Polars - Niki Keramat - nyhackr
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Talk Title- Opening MTA’s Operating Budget: Flattening Hierarchies with Python’s Polars
Talk Description- In Spring 2024, the MTA made its operating budget data available on the NYS Open Data platform. This process involved transforming a complex, hierarchical dataset into a flattened, tabular format using Python’s Polars library. This talk will explore both the technical aspects of this data transformation and the political challenges of making MTA’s operating budget accessible to the public on data.ny.gov. Join us to understand how we navigated these challenges to enhance transparency and public engagement.
Bio- Niki Keramat is a senior data scientist on the Data & Analytics team at the MTA, where she builds data infrastructure to support the publication of open datasets. Her team is committed to the transparency, automation, and analysis of transportation data at the MTA. She has expertise in data analytics, engineering, and governance of operational and financial data from her time working at the MTA and Lyft. She is passionate about public transportation, urban planning, and bike lanes (that are not blocked by cars). MTA D&A Blog - https://new.mta.info/taxonomy/term/11621