Richard Abisla was a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Abisla is currently the Portfolio Manager for the Americas at Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup. Abisla has a long history of working alongside local communities to help them access digital information and education and integrate technology into both their work and lives. He has created and directed technology education and adoption programs in Honduras, Jamaica, Chicago, and San Francisco, all the while focusing on increasing access to digital resources for those who need them most. Most recently, Abisla has focused on working with librarians and library users in Brazil to create applications and processes that help solve local problems through open data resources, as well as training librarians to integrate human-centered design principles into their work in order to plan more impactful programming.
Abisla’s New America India-U.S. Fellows research project will explore the decision-making process that transit authority managers engage in to decide in which circumstances to organize transit data and once organized if that data would become open, or remain closed. Abisla’s project will provide key insights into what communications and information will be necessary for these decision-makers to open their data, clearing the way for transit riders to access schedule data and maps via their phones. Hundreds of millions of people across India use public transit daily, yet have little to no access to information that would help them use their time more effectively, wait less, and make better transit decisions. This project will explore the factors and perceived barriers that inform local decision-making around publishing transit data, strategies to overcome these barriers, and how open transit data might be ensured through public policies.