Tech
Interview: Chris Belasco, chief data officer, City of Pittsburgh | Computer Weekly
Chris Belasco, chief data officer (CDO) at the City of Pittsburgh, is focused on his team’s triumphs. While some data leaders might like to bask in the glory of their personal achievements, Belasco says success in the fast-moving digital age is very much about taking a collegiate approach: “The complaints should come to me, and the credit should go to the team.”
Belasco reached the CDO position by transferring his evaluation and analytics skills from academia to the public sector. He completed a PhD in public affairs and ran a unit at the University of Pittsburgh that conducted large impact evaluations on democracy and foreign assistance for the US Agency for International Development.
With a young family, he was keen to establish roots locally and joined the City of Pittsburgh in 2018 as enterprise project manager. He moved into the CDO role in 2022 and has relished the opportunity to help his organisation build data pipelines and refine its operational processes.
“I was fortunate enough to have good team members, some of whom are still here,” he said. “I’ve built the rest of the team, which has some incredibly sharp data engineering skills that I feel are a nice way to emphasise the capabilities of what the city has to offer.”
As a reflection of those capabilities, Pittsburgh achieved a higher level of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities Certification earlier this year. The certification recognised how the city has established data capabilities to inform policy, allocate funding, improve services, evaluate programmes, and engage residents. Belasco is proud of the achievement.
“Thirty-eight cities are either gold or platinum in the western hemisphere, and we are punching well above our weight class with the capabilities and practices that we’re able to demonstrate,” he says. “What we’re able to achieve through the work we’re doing, such as partnering with Astronomer, is pretty spectacular.”
Creating a fresh approach
As Pittsburgh CDO, Belasco manages analytic, data engineering, and software development efforts to improve the city’s operations. His team builds the connective tissue for city departments to focus on helping residents, rather than managing data infrastructure.
“My job is mainly about making sure the team has the resources they need to succeed,” he says. “I enjoy helping people make better decisions, giving them the resources they need to be able to do that, and helping to achieve transparency.”
Belasco says the other key element of his job is about ensuring data helps the city achieve its objectives, which are centred on citizen requirements: “My role is about connecting people across silos and departments in our organisation, but also the public and our partners, to make sure that they know the data assets that we have.
“I need to ensure we’re using those assets strategically and that we’re achieving the goals set out by the leadership in the city. We need to give the public some of the things they’ve come to expect from cities in this digital age. That’s about being able to advance our practices by listening to the people who say these are the things you should be working on.”
Belasco says the general direction in terms of digital transformation is towards helping Pittsburgh become a data hub. He says the city made strong progress before he arrived at the organisation, referring to a series of dynamic leaders who were eager to help the city progress in the data space.
Since becoming CDO, Belasco has continued this work. He points to the organisation’s transition to the cloud, suggesting his role in Pittsburgh’s continued digital transformation has involved connecting to best practices in other places and ensuring his team has the runway to land its work effectively.
“We’re about to launch our first open data report since 2017. We’ve been able to release open data sets and partner with our data intermediary partners to do community-driven and community-facing data projects that help equity and justice. We’ve also achieved some safety measures that feel a little unheard of in our domain,” he says.
“We partnered with human resources, the Department of Public Works, which was the pilot leader, and the Mayor’s Office, and we built both the ability to report on safety incidents and the outcome metrics. That work has reduced safety incidents and ensures that employees can go home from work safely, and that’s clearly tremendously important.”
Opening data access
Belasco and his team have also been focused on building real-time citizen dashboards that provide open access to government data. At the heart of this programme of work sits the organisation’s implementation of Astronomer technology.
The Astro platform helps Belasco’s team manage the city’s Apache Airflow data pipelines. Before implementing the platform, the team maintained its Airflow environments on Google Cloud Composer. However, the team struggled with Composer outages and spent valuable time firefighting issues when they wanted to focus on developing innovative citizen services.
Belasco and his colleagues assessed their options and believed Astro could support a digital transformation. The data team began the migration to Astro in early 2024 once they’d demonstrated the case for change to the city’s senior executives.
“I enjoy helping people make better decisions, giving them the resources they need to be able to do that, and helping to achieve transparency”
Chris Belasco, City of Pittsburgh
“We tried to come up with an estimate of how much time we would spend servicing Composer images,” he says. “We were trying to be entrepreneurial about ways that we could help free up time for our people who knew engineering but were spending time on data management. So, Astro was a force multiplier for us to take their time and move it off into something else. The executives understood that we were trying to make our processes more efficient.”
One of the most important initiatives being supported by Astro is the City’s recently launched OneStopPGH Insights tool, a web-based application that allows residents to track neighbourhood permits, code violations and zoning applications online in real-time. Belasco says the pioneering initiative is a great example of how his organisation is working to create data-enabled services for Pittsburgh citizens.
“The site will tell you all the different pieces of information related to the area you’re exploring,” he says, adding that more than 30 permit types are already tracked. “Soon, the platform will also include everything from our Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, such as information related to transportation, rights of way and street segments.”
About 99% of the city’s data activities run in Astro, which has become the city’s unified orchestration platform. The shift to Astro has involved more than four million rows of transformed data across 13 pipelines. The platform also supports the city’s open data efforts, enabling data scientists and the public to use information freely and easily.
“These technologies are the foundations for creating useful visualisations,” says Belasco.
Proving the value of information
Belasco says the work around Astro is a good example of the data-led change that his organisation is attempting to pursue. Across all stages of this initiative and other transformation projects, there’s a continual attempt to build strong bonds with line-of-business professionals.
He gives the example of how this joined-up approach has helped prove the benefits of the OneStopPGH Insights tool to the broader Pittsburgh community: “There’s a project manager in another department who is overseeing the implementation of the software that is used for this programme of work.
“They’re also the person who’s gone out to the community groups to talk to them about using and transitioning to this new software. And the people in the community have had nothing but good things to say. So, this initiative is a triumph of a handful of different teams working together to get the work done.”
When it comes to lessons for other business and digital leaders, Belasco says that modern data chiefs must ensure people across the organisation understand the value of projects that produce insights for line-of-business professionals and external clients. His team stands on the shoulders of earlier work and the recognition of the benefits of transformation in Pittsburgh.
“I feel like everything started with culture changes in technology leadership at the city, which we were able to glom onto and grow. I want to credit the CIOs and past leaders of our organisation who have helped to grow that culture across departments, so that data people in the various departments could get interesting projects moving along,” he says.
“You grow trust out at the department-to-department level and get everybody moving along in one direction as closely as you can. We’ve acted like a subcommittee to help ensure that everyone believes in our work and has a say in what we’re doing. That institutionalisation is a way that we’ve been able to achieve our targets as we’ve moved forward, and then those conversations translate over into products we create.”
Building long-term trust
The data team continues to seek new ways to exploit information. When it comes to artificial intelligence, Belasco says the aim is to explore emerging technology carefully. “We’re working on adapting our activities to ensure that our workforce has the tools to be able to do higher-order work,” he adds. “That’s our pathway.”
Belasco says successful data projects are all about communication and collaboration: “When you say, ‘OK, here’s what we need to do’, and you have someone from a line-of-business department who has a leadership role in the work you’re doing, and they’re telling you, ‘Here’s what I need to see from the project’, then you begin to work together with other people closely to achieve your targets.”
The key to data success is getting the right people from other lines of business across the organisation involved early and quickly.
“It’s all about getting visibility from teams and subject matter experts to help make sure that they have a voice and can contribute,” Belasco says. “You must build trust between your team and the line-of-business professionals and senior executives in the organisation.”
Across the region, facilities tied to water and power—including desalination plants—have been damaged or exposed to risk as Iranian strikes extend beyond traditional targets.
A single strike, however, is unlikely to shut off the gulf’s water supply. The system is designed to absorb isolated disruption, but sustained or multisite attacks would begin to strain supply far more quickly.
“In the Gulf, desalination is built with enough breathing room that losing one plant doesn’t immediately show up at the tap,” says Rabee Rustum, professor of water and environmental engineering at Heriot-Watt University Dubai.
In Kuwait, Iranian drone attacks have damaged two power and desalination facilities and ignited fires at two oil sites. Other sites, including Fujairah in the UAE, have been identified as potentially exposed.
“Striking desalination plants would be a strategic move, but it would also come very close to, and in some cases cross, a red line,” says Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London.
Water infrastructure, Krieg explains, occupies a distinct category. “Water infrastructure is not just another utility. In places that depend on desalination, it underpins civilian survival, public health, hospital function, sanitation, and basic state legitimacy.”
Krieg notes that international humanitarian law gives special protection to civilian objects and to objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. “Which is precisely why attacks on water systems carry such grave legal and moral weight,” Krieg adds.
The incidents highlight a structural reality: Desalination is central to water supply in the gulf, and disruption carries immediate implications for daily life.
How the System Absorbs Disruption
At first glance, desalination appears vulnerable. Shut down a plant, and supply is reduced. In practice, the system is designed with layers of redundancy.
Plants operate across multiple locations, allowing output to be redistributed if one facility slows down. Water is also stored at different points across the network, including central reservoirs and building-level tanks, creating a buffer that delays disruption.
According to a statement to WIRED Middle East by Veolia, an environmental services provider whose technologies account for nearly 19 percent of desalination capacity in the region, “the region’s water supply is diversified thanks to a network of numerous facilities distributed along the coastline.”
The company adds that distribution systems are interconnected, allowing plants to “support and substitute for one another when necessary,” helping maintain continuity of service.
In the UAE, storage capacity typically covers around one week, while in other parts of the region it may be limited to two to three days, Veolia says.
In practice, this means the system can absorb disruption for a limited period. Once reserves are depleted, water supply depends on whether plants can continue producing enough water to meet demand.
The System That Produces Water
Unlike most regions, the Gulf does not rely on rivers or rainfall. It depends on a network of desalination plants along its coastline that convert seawater into potable water on a continuous basis.
Seawater is drawn into treatment facilities, filtered and processed either through reverse osmosis—forcing it through membranes to remove salt and impurities—or through thermal methods that evaporate and condense water. The resulting supply is distributed through pipelines, stored in reservoirs, and delivered to homes, hospitals, and industry.
This is not a flexible system. It is designed to operate continuously, producing water at a scale that sustains cities, industrial activity, and essential services. Gulf states produce roughly 40 percent of the world’s desalinated water, operating more than 400 plants across the region.
Dependence varies by country but is high everywhere. In the UAE, desalination accounts for 41 to 42 percent of total water supply, while in Kuwait, it provides around 90 percent of drinking water, and in Saudi Arabia, approximately 70 percent.
When Disruption Becomes Visible
For residents, disruption would not be felt immediately—water would continue to flow.
Rustum explains that buildings are supported by internal storage and pumping systems, meaning early changes in supply may not be apparent. In many cases, water pressure remains stable, even as the wider system adjusts.
US Border Patrol agents are raising money by selling coins that commemorate last year’s wave of immigration enforcement “operations” across the country, along with other merchandise. The funds are for nonprofit organizations that list Border Patrol buildings as their address in IRS paperwork. At least two of the organizations have dedicated US Customs and Border Protection email addresses.
The front side of one coin for sale reads, “NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2025,” along with the acronyms for US Border Patrol and the acronym for “fuck around and find out”—a phrase that was initially popularized by the far-right group the Proud Boys and has been used by various Trump officials. In the center, the coin depicts a gas mask, a riot control smoke grenade, and a pepper ball launcher. On the other side, the coin appears to have a portrait of Border Patrol’s now retired commander-at-large, Gregory Bovino, with his arm raised in a salute, along with the text “COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU!” It lists seven cities, many of which actually saw federal enforcement surges in 2025: Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Phoenix, Portland, Charlotte, and Atlanta.
The coin is for sale by Willcox Morale Welfare and Recreation, a nonprofit that the IRS most recently declared tax-exempt during the Biden administration and whose address on IRS paperwork matches that of the Willcox Border Patrol Station in Arizona. A request for comment sent to Willcox MWR’s dedicated CBP email address went unanswered.
Employees of the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency for Border Patrol, are allowed to start private, not-for-profit employee associations within DHS, so long as they get formally recognized by the agency and follow certain rules. According to DHS policies, officially recognized groups can fundraise using government property and create merchandise with the agency’s name and logos–but they have to receive advance approval from the agency.
Willcox MWR is just one of several groups across the country that cater to Border Patrol agents and refer to themselves as MWRs, a reference to the US military’s “morale, welfare and recreation” programs. The groups tend to throw holiday events and retirement parties, and sometimes raise money for the families of agents going through hard times, including those not getting paid during the current shutdown.
Many MWRs also sell customized medallions known as “challenge coins” that commemorate specific teams or events. While anyone, including CBP alumni, can design and sell coins, current DHS employees are not supposed to use government resources to sell ones that use the agency’s seals or logos without permission, or ones that the agency considers inappropriate or unprofessional.
CBP did not provide comment about its relationship to Willcox MWR or any other nonprofit mentioned in this story, nor whether the agency had green-lit the “North American Tour” coin design, ahead of publication.
Under Willcox MWR’s Facebook post about the “North American Tour” coin, someone named Juan Diego commented, “Sign up SDC BK5 MWR for 10.”
“Shoot us an email,” someone managing the Willcox MWR account replied, giving out what appeared to be a dedicated cbp.dhs.gov email address for the group.
SDC BK5 MWR, also a registered nonprofit, lists an address on its website that matches that of a government facility in Chula Vista, California. It says on its site that it was started by San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents and sells custom merchandise “designed to raise funds for morale and relief efforts.”
Diego did not respond to a request for comment.
The SDC BK5 MWR website has listings for over 200 different products in addition to the North American Tour coin. One of those listings was a “Chicago Midway Blitz” challenge coin in the shape of a gas mask that doubles as a bottle opener. Embossed around the edges of the coin are the names of several municipalities and neighborhoods caught up in DHS’s immigration enforcement surge of the same name last fall. Like the North American Tour coin, it features the US Border Patrol logo and the acronym for “fuck around and find out.” Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activity in Illinois are unamused.
Tired of taking your action camera on an adventure, only to get home and find out you missed the action with a bad angle? One option is to switch to a 360-degree action cam, so you can capture all of the action and then edit down to just the good stuff later. One of our favorite options, the DJI Osmo 360, is currently available for just $390 on Amazon, a $209 discount from its usual price, and it comes with a selfie stick and an extra battery.
The DJI Osmo 360 achieves its impressive all-around video quality by leveraging a pair of 1/1.1-inch sensors, larger than some other offerings, and by supporting 10-bit color. You can really see that in the camera’s output, with colors that are vivid and bold, to the point that you may need to dial them back a bit in post if you want something more natural. With support for up to 50 frames per second at 8K when recording in 360 degrees, or 120 fps at 4K when shooting with only one sensor, you’ll have plenty of material to work with. In our testing, it ran for just shy of two hours at 30 fps, which is also around the time the internal storage had filled up anyway.
If you plan on catching any serious discussions with your Osmo 360, you’ll be pleased to know it connects directly to DJI’s line of wireless lavalier microphones, including the excellent and frequently discounted DJI Mic 2 and Mic Mini. If you want to mount it to something other than the included 1.2-meter selfie stick, it has both DJI’s magnetic attachment system and a more traditional ¼”-20 tripod mount. The DJI Mimo app lets you control the camera and adjust any settings, and there’s even a simple editor for on-the-fly production. For desktop users, DJI Studio has even more in-depth settings and editing options, in case you don’t want to pay for Premiere.
The DJI Osmo 360 is one of our favorite action cameras, and is particularly appealing at the discounted price point, but make sure to check out our full review for more info, or head over to our full roundup to see what else is available.
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