Courtney Fassett - I am a junior majoring in GeoDesign with a double minor in Applied Analytics and Spanish.
The Spatial Sciences Institute alerted me that the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office was accepting applications for its Data Team’s DataLA Summer Academy. I was accepted and landed a summer internship with the City of Los Angeles Office of Finance to assess business registration compliance.
Utilizing my major and expertise in GeoDesign, I contributed to my internship project which involved data management, visualization, analysis, and applications using non-public tax division data. I investigated and compared which areas of the city and which industries are more inclined to register their businesses with the city as required by law. I produced a set of mapped assets that depict spatial patterns of compliance from 2008 to 2018. My time-enabled heatmap helps identify hotspots of unregistered businesses – those which have not paid city taxes – which are actionable data to inform the Tax Enforcement Program and increase city revenue.
During my summer internship, I experienced how GIS and location analytics play a significant part in managing the city’s taxes and revenue. I gained insight in to how a GeoDesign major can provide expertise in areas such as finance, consulting, and business intelligence. My GeoDesign major prepared me to be successful in my summer internship especially when resolving coding issues with Python and SQL, programming languages that are taught in the USC Spatial Sciences Institute’s various academic programs and courses. - Courtney Fassett
