Nick Hand, PhD
I’m a public servant and data scientist at the Delaware Attorney General’s Office. I believe government should deliver for the public and hold powerful companies accountable when they take advantage of people.
About
I’m the Senior AI Policy and Technology Fellow in the Delaware Attorney General’s Fraud and Consumer Protection Division.
Before that, I was a technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that protects people from unfair practices by banks and lenders, where I investigated how financial companies use AI and customer data. I came to government from astrophysics (PhD, UC Berkeley), and spent more than five years in Philadelphia’s City Controller’s Office, the independent office that audits city government, leading a team that studied the city’s budget, taxes, property assessments and gun violence.
Data tools that help government deliver
Wissahickon Analytics is my data analysis and custom software practice. I help governments and civic organizations turn their data into tools people can use: dashboards, budget explainers, and analysis that answers hard questions. I handle the whole project, from messy data to the finished product.
So far, that has mostly meant budget work: interactive explainers of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania budgets for The Philadelphia Citizen, and a public budget dashboard for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, now in progress. I also maintain the Philadelphia Gun Violence Dashboard pro bono for the Civic Coalition to Save Lives, and I’m open to similar projects.
This is part-time work alongside my role at the Delaware Attorney General’s Office, so I take on a small number of projects at a time.
Email me with a short description of the work you have in mind.
Selected work
Independent projects
Mapping Philadelphia’s Gun Violence
An interactive map of Philadelphia shootings I built at the City Controller’s Office. I now maintain it pro bono for the Civic Coalition to Save Lives.public-data · geospatial · dataviz · philadelphia02Fair Measure Philadelphia
A free tool that checks whether your home’s property assessment looks fair by comparing it with an independent estimate built from public records, and helps you appeal if it doesn’t.machine-learning · public-data · property-assessment · philadelphiaEarlier work
ProgressPHL
A dashboard comparing quality of life across Philadelphia neighborhoods, built at the City Controller’s Office.civic-indicators · public-dashboard · philadelphia(external site)04Geospatial Data Science in Python
The graduate course I designed and taught at the University of Pennsylvania on analyzing maps and city data with Python.teaching · python · geospatial · public-policy(external site)05nbodykit
Open-source software for analyzing huge simulations of the universe, which I co-developed during my PhD. I’m first author of its paper.open-source · python · mpi · cosmology(external site)06Parking Jawn
An older project mapping parking tickets across Philadelphia.archived · maps · civic-data(external site)Writing & public data
Pieces for The Philadelphia Citizen: an op‑ed on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and interactive explainers of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania budgets that I built through Wissahickon Analytics.