open data & yelp: the lives project by: karina salehi, lives project lead @ yelp

Open data & Yelp: The LIVES Project

By: Karina Salehi, LIVES Project Lead @ Yelp

The LIVES ProjectMobile Desktop

Health Inspections and Yelp?

• Local Inspector Value-Entry Specification (LIVES)• Open data initiative developed in 2012• Governments share Health inspections data on Yelp businesses

pages• 8 regions are part of the LIVES program• LIVES is growing!

What is Open Data?

Ideally, government open data is:• Machine-readable / structured• Easy to find• Easy to download• High value• Up to date

• Promotes Civic Responsibility• Prevents Food Bourne Illnesses (Health Inspection Open Data)• Ushering in new Industry

– Accela, Socrata

Why is Open Data good?

“Don't make people find the data -- make the data find the people."

- Tim O’Reilly 

Traffic on Yelp

Yelp’s Mission

“Yelp's mission is to connect people with great local businesses; along the way, we hope to enrich lives of consumers and small business owners.” - Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp CEO

LIVES Today

“Analog” Open Data Success Story: County of Los Angeles

LIVES Today

LIVES Today

LIVES Today

Required information for matching businesses to Yelp pages:

A unique ID – often times, this is the license numbers:

The business’s Name

The Street address of a business

The City

*Providing more information only helps with matching

LIVES Today

Result

For cities that do not capture a score, this string represents the non-numeric result of the inspection.

The string must be 4 characters or shorter.

Examples: Pass, Fail, Cond

LIVES Today

Critical

Describes whether the violation is critical or not. This must be a true or false value.

LIVES Today: Recent Updates

• What about non-scoring jurisdictions?– Pass/Fail/Cond.

• More transparency for consumers– “critical” or “non-critical” violations

LIVES: What is next?

“The deployment of inspectors is usually fairly random, which means time is often wasted on spot checks at clean, rule-abiding restaurants. Social media can help narrow the search for violators.”

- Luther Lowe & Michael Luca, “City Governments Are Using Yelp to Tell You Where Not to Eat”, www.hbr.org

Yelp.com/healthscoreshealthscores@yelp.com

Karina@yelp.com