ECOP DataViz Challenge

Frequently Asked Questions

How many teams are participating? What is the teams make up?
There are currently 16 teams participating in the challenge. Each team consists of 6-7
team members. The teams are a mix of OPS staff from different ministries and students
from various universities across Canada (mostly Ontario). Participants of diverse
strength in data analytics, visualization and public policy are mixed together.

What is the submission deadline?

The deadline for submission is April 24 at 11.59 p.m.

What are the categories for the data sets and themes that are used in the
challenge?
The data sets are public data and are accessible through the Google Drive link for all
participants. The data is divided into two themes with some suggested questions
(please see the lists of questions below). Questions are not limited to the list. Teams
can use other public data sets and add additional scope for their project related to
climate change or COVID-19 and its impact with the preferred focus on the province of
Ontario. Creativity is highly graded in this challenge. If your team chooses to use
additional data sets, please make sure the data is public and contains no confidential
and sensitive information.

Climate change:

• How does climate change affect health of Ontarian residents?

• How does climate change impact trade, financial system and divestment from
fossil fuel?
• How competitive is Ontario in promoting and funding green technology?
• How will climate change affect communities across Ontario? Rural vs Urban?
Northern vs Southern cities? Vulnerable population: indigenous, immigrants,
elders?
• What policies or programs can be implemented in Ontario to minimize climate
change?

COVID-19:

• How is Canada, and Ontario in particular, trending compared to other countries

and provinces? Could you predict when it will peak? Same uptake cases?
• How well are governments doing in coping with the pandemic?
 • How many ICUs, hospital beds are in the inventory, what are the costs, and how
well are we prepared?
• What are the key data insights?
• How has COVID-19 impacted the economy? How can the province recover?

Do you keep updating the data sets as things are evolving every day, specifically
for teams who chose COVID-19?
We are not able to update the dataset daily. However, the link to the Ontario website
with the most updated datasets can be accessed here:

Confirmed Positive Cases of COVID-19 in Ontario:

https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/confirmed-positive-cases-of-covid-19-in-ontario

Status of COVID-19 Cases in Ontario:

https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/status-of-covid-19-cases-in-ontario

Do teams have to answer both sets of questions?

No. Each team will decide on one theme to be used for their submission.

However, teams are not restricted to one theme – if your team members choose to
answer both sets of questions and make two submissions instead on one, the chances
for winning will increase.

Do we get to know how many teams are we competing with under each topic?
Teams will decide internally what theme they would choose for their final submission. It
is not guaranteed that there will be an even number of teams competing within the
same group, and we might not be aware of some teams’ choices.

What software will teams use for their data visualizations?

Teams are free to use any data visualization software they prefer. Even though teams
are offered technical support and learning resources by the Tableau group, it should be
an internal decision by the group members on what type of software they would like to
use based on the skills, expertise and preferences.

My team received an admin username and password when installing Tableau

Desktop or another data visualization software. What do I do?

This would require a call to OPS IT service desk: 1-888-677-4873 to approve the
software for you. If they are unable to solve this for you, please use Tableau Online or
work with another team member who has the software installed (TeamViewer can be
used for this as a ‘One Time Install’ with no restrictions on OPS firewall).

How do I download Tableau?

You can download Tableau through Tableau online that you would have been provided
access to. You can also download here and activate with product key: TC8E-FAA7-
E1D0-7090-E57E

Tableau Desktop: https://www.tableau.com/support/releases/desktop/2020.1.2

Tableau Prep: https://www.tableau.com/support/releases/prep/2020.1.4

How will teams submit their work?

Participants will submit entries on the portal that will be disclosed along with more
detailed judging criteria and list of judges.

What is a suggested format for submissions?

Creativity and innovation are strongly encouraged. There are no restrictions in terms of
format teams would like to use in their final submission, whether it is a deck, a chart, an
interactive dashboard, infographics or a map-based graph.

How will teams be evaluated if some may use the latest data and others won’t?
Although teams are free to do their own research and use the latest data sets for their
submissions, the major evaluation criteria will be based on how the story is unfolding
and supported by data analysis and visualization. Access to the latest data can be
considered a bonus but will not be the judging criteria.

Will teams be presenting their final submissions?

Final submissions from all teams will be available on the website where winners will be
announced. We expect the winning teams to share their basic methodology, including
additional data they have used, if applicable, software, and key insights that were used
for the story and data visualization.

Is there any page limit for the final deck presentation?

Since there are no strict rules for the final product, there is no limit to the number of
pages for team submissions. Teams will have to use their own judgement on what type
of product would better tell their story and choose a type of data visualization that will
present their analysis more effectively.

Do you have any suggestions for team management?

Ability to work in a diverse team with mixed skills and experiences is a part of the
challenge which is not subject to evaluation. Some team members will be better at data
visualization skills and storytelling, while others in policy recommendation and analysis.
Get to know your team and their strengths and expertise early enough to better
delegate tasks later.

It is a very busy time for a lot of OPS staff now and time commitment may be difficult at
times. Each team has students who are very enthusiastic, skillful and willing to learn
and help with the challenge. Make sure you communicate clearly, regularly and
explicitly within your team and let them know timely if you have a tight deadline
approaching and need to take a little pause but would step in to help with another task
shortly.

What are the judging criteria for submissions?

The main five categories that will be used as the judging criteria are relevance,
innovation, storytelling, accuracy of data analysis and design. A more detailed
breakdown for the judging criteria along with the list of judges and winning prizes will be
shared with the teams later during the week.

• Relevance: applicability of the story to Ontario public policy

• Innovation: intersection of data analysis and creative representation of data
• Storytelling: the problem is clearly articulated, the story is consistent to the key
insights, the story is comprehensive and is well supported by the analysis and
• Analysis: quality of the data analysis and accuracy of the information used in the
story
• Design: execution of creative representation with beautiful, easy to interpret,
comprehensive, relevant and effective design

Who are the judges?

The judging panel will consist of 4 – 6 judges from the industry and OPS senior
management staff. The judging panel and the list of more detailed judging criteria will be
shared with all participants this week.

What is the prize, if the team wins?

The main purpose of the challenge is to support knowledge mobilization and skills
exchange among OPS staff and universities. Apart from certificates for participation and
award certificate for the winning teams, students and OPS staff will be able to enhance
their technical skills and policy making experience during this collaborative project, build
up their network and have a greater exposure to different ministries’ work. For students
who are looking for job opportunities and would like to apply for co-op and internship
opportunities with OPS, both participation and winner certificate will boost your resume!

We will include the options for prizes along with the list of the judging panel to be shared
later.

I missed the Tableau bootcamp, can I get a recording?

The Tableau workshop recording can be viewed here: Play recording

The data sets used for the workshop are available here:
https://tableau.egnyte.com/fl/jzoMVfC71X
Additional Tableau courses are also available and can be accessed through Tableau
eLearning with access code: 2020elearning.

If we have more questions in the following days, who shall we email to ask?
For any questions in the future days to come, you can email:

ecop@ontario.ca
Abdulrahman.Khodr@ontario.ca
Eva.Golota@ontario.ca

Some tips and helpful resources

DataViz Student Challenge – provides good examples of data visualizations submitted
as a part of a similar challenge

How to choose the right data visualization type – some tips on how to decide on the
type of a data visualization

Climate change data visualizations

The impact of COVID-19 data visualization – an example of a data visualization of

COVID-19 with explanation of the data sets used and methodology

Europe’s coronavirus response – examples of COVID-19 visualizations and

infographics

Tableau eLearning - preimum Tableau eLearning is available for all participants for 3
months by using the following code (participants can use the same login as Tableau
Online or make a new registeration): 2020elearning