Overview
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) is a New York government agency that was established in 1969 as the City’s Department of Markets. Adapting to the constant changes of the markets, the department was renamed to its current title in 2019 with the mission of “…protect and enhance the lives of all of players in the marketplace, including consumers, business and workers…”.
Given this dual responsibility, the department covers a wide range of issues for multiple parties. One of the main functions of the DCWP is handling complaints from consumers and workers, but those two groups reach the agency through very different channels. This project visualizes how they get there, and their reasoning, using public data.
Data and Method
The data sources were gathered from the NYC Open Data website, where the DCWP published two separate datasets, the “DCWP Consumer Complaints” and “Office of Labor Policy & Standards Workplace Inquiries (Historical)”, with self-explanatory titles. (Note that the OLPS is the previous name of the DCWP). The two datasets overlap well from Sept 2022 to Apr 2024, providing a wide time window for analysis. The sets contain roughly 20,000 consumer complaints and 4,000 worker inquiries, which is a first indication of what the visualization will show. Furthermore, both sets present the intake channel (how the users have reached the department) and the complaint topic, allowing for a clearer understanding of the relationship between methodology and complaint types. The visualization was built using two tools: Claude, which handled the cleaning and structuring of both datasets, and Gephi, where the network was rendered.
The network
Finding 1 – 311 Dominates the consumer side, workers don’t speak up
The DCWP has long tried to establish a strong online presence by creating an online portal that allows consumers and workers to submit complaints directly to the agency for review. However, it becomes clear from the data that both sides have yet to adapt to the intake channel. Roughly 73% of consumer complaints route through 311, with only approximately 20% using the online form to submit a complaint. The situation is even more critical when it comes to the workers. The data shows how consumer complaints amount to more than 20,000, vs roughly 4,000 worker inquiries in the same time window. That’s roughly five consumer complaints for every one worker inquiry. The fact that fewer workers reach DCWP isn’t because fewer workers have problems. It’s often because workers may fear retaliation from their employer or may have immigration status concerns. Furthermore, the complaint process itself is more daunting when one may risk their livelihood, not just a refund. This leaves the main channel of workers’ complaints to be email, with roughly 43%, and online form only at 31%.
Finding 2 – The online portal can be the preferred channel.
Visually, the online form sits at the pivot point between the consumer and worker clusters. This makes it a hugely important asset in the DCWP intake channels, the one platform where the department serves both audiences at once. This indicates a huge potential for the online portal, which, at its current state, is not being positioned by the department as a valuable option for consumers and workers. This is further reinforced by a recent usability study conducted by a team at Pratt Institute, which was commissioned to assess the usability issues of the online portal. The team, which the author of this report was part of, exposed critical issues, especially on the workers’ side of the portal, that can be further explored through this online report: click here. The DCWP is clearly lagging in providing a reliable and modern way to submit complaints.
In Conclusion
Overall, this visualization points out how the DCWP has a clear need to streamline its intake channels. Creating a user-friendly experience through a restructured online portal seems to be the best way forward to capture the largest number of users who are currently reverting to the other electronic pathway, email. By aggregating the online form and email channels and comparing it the 311 channel, we can see that it would make a considerable difference. 311 would still hold the lead for consumers with 73%, and online at 23%. While for workers, the online channel would jump to 75% compared to 9% of the 311 channel. It seems that the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has a clear necessity in order to “protect and enhance the lives of all of players in the marketplace”.