Collect data for the Fortune top 100 companies

[ravenclaw1999]

We should start the collection of data for the top 100 companies. For now, we would be collecting the companies' statements in response to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as a picture of their executive team. Also, link their public Diversity/Inclusion report if they have one as well as if they have any contracts with ICE.

[LaChapeliere]

Hey, do you have a data structure set up for this that we can start feeding?

[ravenclaw1999]

Hi, we do not currently have a database set up. One of the other issues I listed was that we needed to set up a SQL database using Heroku. If you want to work on that, feel free to get that started. But if you prefer to collect the data using an excel sheet, that would also be very helpful! You can export the excel sheet as a CSV and add that file to a pull request. Thanks and let me know if you have any other questions.

[LaChapeliere]

I'm terrible with Ops stuff so I wouldn't know how to set up anything with Heroku, but I can design the database scheme it that's useful? Either a very simple one that can be exported to a CSV, or a more flexible one that you can upgrade later if you want to collect more info than what you've described here.

[ravenclaw1999]

That sounds good! Either option works 👍

[LaChapeliere]

Alrighty! If you have stuff you already know you want to include, I'm all ears 👂

[LaChapeliere]

How about that: https://dbdiagram.io/d/5f7f8afe3a78976d7b76ef2c

[ravenclaw1999]

That looks great!

[LaChapeliere]

Cool! A couple of questions then.

• I'm not familiar with admin aspects of businnesses in the US. Do businesses have a unique identifying number?
• Is there a national database of official information for businesses? Fortune has a lot of info but it's mostly financial
• Do you want to add fields for diversity stats? (gender, ethnicity, ...) If so, how do you want them to be labelled since this is very culture-dependant?
• Do you see fields missing for information you had in mind?
• How do you plan for people to contribute to the database? Crowd-sourcing always as the issue of people being able to add false info... Maybe they could request an authentification from you in some way?
• Also on the contribution to the database, what kind of interface did you have in mind? People filling in a table on the website? A chatbot asking for information? Pushing a .csv to the repo? Something else?

[ravenclaw1999]

Hi, these are some great questions! Here are some answers that I hope you find helpful:

• Employers have a federal EIN which is granted through the IRS. I don’t think we need to store this yet - giving them a unique ID in our system should be fine!
• Not sure about the national database - the IRS may be a good source but for now the main resources will probably be the companies’ own websites and social media pages
• I think we could use a field for a link to their public diversity report. Not all companies have them since they are not required by law. Generally they release 1 per year (I know Zillow is a good example which has theirs publicly available)
• How do we plan for people to contribute to the database? This is a really good question.. a Google form which could be reviewed is one option? Or submit a pull request.
• Let’s start simple to begin - I think a CSV sounds great.

[LaChapeliere]

* Employers have a federal EIN which is granted through the IRS.  I don’t think we need to store this yet - giving them a unique ID in our system should be fine!

👍

* Not sure about the national database - the IRS may be a good source but for now the main resources will probably be the companies’ own websites and social media pages

👍

* I think we could use a field for a link to their public diversity report.  Not all companies have them since they are not required by law.  Generally they release 1 per year (I know Zillow is a good example which has theirs publicly available)

It is different from the public diversity policy, right? I can add a field for that.

* How do we plan for people to contribute to the database? This is a really good question.. a Google form which could be reviewed is one option?  Or submit a pull request.

* Let’s start simple to begin - I think a CSV sounds great.

Okay, will loook into writing contribution guidelines for that then 👍

[ravenclaw1999]

You can add a new field for the public diversity policy

[LaChapeliere]

@ravenclaw1999 Mind if I try promoting the database creation issue? It'll be easier to test queries and update processes with an actual database setup ;)

[ravenclaw1999]

Go ahead! That would be great if you set it up :)

[LaChapeliere]

We can use this to get the list of companies in Fortune 500 and part of the financial data.
Diversity data will need to be added manually like @Anjali001 has done, of course, but it'll be easier to coordinate once we have the companies in the database because they'll have been assigned a unique id.
From there we'll also be able to set up a process to add other companies not in the list.

[kelseyhuse30]

@LaChapeliere omg, that repo is a goldmine. that is perfect! while we don't have the database set up, we can add individual markdown files that have data about the companies that we want to display

Here's an example of Walmart
I just added some random fields for testing but we can make this more structured based on your design.

[LaChapeliere]

I'm working on a data contribution pipeline with the database queries so people can start adding .csv (but we could do a script to transform markdown into csv) that will be uplodable to the database when it exists, avoid having to redo work on data that has already been collected :)

Do you want me to add a logo field to the db design?

[ravenclaw1999]

@LaChapeliere adding a logo field to the db design sounds great!

[Anjali001]

@ravenclaw1999
Hi !
I was thinking to add more data. I guess you are now doing it in .md files as shown in examples.
If there are no issues , then I can make .md files for Fortune 21 to 30 companies.

[ravenclaw1999]

@Anjali001 That sounds great! @kelseyhuse30 also added a couple of different companies you can collect data for under issues.

[LaChapeliere]

@Anjali001 @kelseyhuse30 .csv would be much easier to process and feed into the database later, if that works for you too.
@Anjali001 If you can use the column names from this diagram https://dbdiagram.io/d/5f7f8afe3a78976d7b76ef2c that'd be great but if not I'll figure a way to reformat it later. Don't worry about filling all the columns, most of them can be empty.

[Anjali001]

@LaChapeliere I don't have any problem. I'll then add a new CSV file with data for fortune 21-30. I hope that works. Also, for column headings, I can change them but I'm not able to understand the diagram completely. Can you upload a CSV with necessary headings, I'll directly make changes to it.

[LaChapeliere]

@LaChapeliere I don't have any problem. I'll then add a new CSV file with data for fortune 21-30. I hope that works. Also, for column headings, I can change them but I'm not able to understand the diagram completely. Can you upload a CSV with necessary headings, I'll directly make changes to it.

Great coordination :D I just pushed a draft PR ( #41 ) where you can find the explanations and headers for the different tables. Tell me if something is unclear and I'll do my best to improve the guide.

[Anjali001]

@LaChapeliere Thanks. Your guide was very helpful. I've collected data according to it this time. Let me know if any changes are required.

[LaChapeliere]

I'll look at it and see if I need to change some stuff in the guide, I've already noticed a couple of mistakes and unclear things