The CalEPA Racial Equity Team’s (CRET) Data Subteam serves all the Boards, Departments and Offices (BDOs) in CalEPA by building, maintaining, and enhancing data resources to advance racial equity.
The Data Subteam has three projects that support the CalEPA Plan to Achieve Racial Equity (PARE). These projects are centered on race and organized by purpose. For example, one purpose is to inform workforce racial equity efforts. The target audience of this purpose includes the current state employee community, future employees, and those leaving our workforce. We shorthand this larger audience and purpose to “workforce”. Another purpose (shorthanded "pollution") is to deliver more racially equitable outcomes in the communities we serve by developing useful data and tools for employees. Such data and tools could be program specific or community level. For example, the Pollution and Prejudice storymap uses a community lens to measure population and pollution burdens. Finally, language access issues (i.e. linguistic isolation) span across all our public facing work at CalEPA. Therefore, the third purpose serves to support better “engagement" in the communities we serve by increasing awareness of langauge spread.
The Data Subteam recognizes the existing data and tools are not enough to achieve racial equity in the workforce and communities we serve. In addition, some tools are not relevant to all environmental justice issues, like lack of access to nature cultural practices affected by water rights. Thus, each section has "ideas" for future directions.
The Data Subteam is constantly looking to improve. For any questions, comments, or collaboration requests, please email the Data Subteam lead at Leah.Jones@Waterboards.ca.gov
- Lily Wu (OEHHA)
- Greg Gearheart (WB)
- Leah Jones (WB)
- Devan Burke (WB)
- David Altare (WB)
- Ca.gov HR data (statewide, all departments)
- CalHR 5102
- CalHR 5112
- Racial Equity Survey(s)
- Github repo with all code and data: https://github.com/CAWaterBoardDataCenter/ca-state-workforce-data/
- Includes R Script to create demographic graphs compared to census data for any state agency as well as visualizations using Microsoft Power BI
- Does CalEPA reflect the diversity of the communities it serves?
- How are promotions given out? Does this vary by race?
- Does retention vary by race? What is the historical hiring pattern (trend over time)?
- At CalEPA, is someone more likely to be selected for a job based on race?
- Anonymous exit surveys which show:
- Years in the system (retention)
- Rates & reasons for leaving a job
- Hiring processes at CalEPA and all BDOs
- For example, whether or not names are redacted
- Regional distribution of CalEPA demographics to compare to census data
- Possible to sort/view CalHR data with geographic layer
- Include data with a range of workforce longevity (retention and promotion)
- Annually update existing analyses
- Analyze Racial Equity Survey trends over time (first survey data analysis in progress)
- Jenn McGovern (WB)
- Jaimie Huynh (CalRecycle)
- Walker Wheeland (OEHHA)
- Beti Girma (WB)
- David Altare (WB)
- Maraid Jiminez (WB)
- Kevin Olp (Bay Area AQMD)
- Charles Lee (USEPA)
- CalEnviroScreen: https://calenviroscreen-oehha.hub.arcgis.com/
- CalEPA Pollution and Prejudice Storymap / redlining and EJ: explores historic redlining data intersection with contemporary CalEnviroScreen (pollution and population burden indices) data, along with some contemporary race demographic breakdowns.
- Incorporating CalEnviroScreen 4.0 once uploaded
- Collaborating with universities on open science model
- Marina Perez (WB)
- Bev Anderson-Abbs (WB)
- Allysen Calalang (WB)
- Language and Linguistic Isolation
- Layer with tech/accessibility (i.e. is wifi accessible/in home or by travel).
- Include data on student and parent language from Department of Education