Open Data Implementation Update

Performance & Analytics Department

City of San Diego

Why we're here

Open Data Policy effective January 2015

Section 2.1 requires the Chief Data Officer to prepare written guidelines describing how to prepare an inventory of Data Sets owned or managed by the City.

Section 2.4 requires the Chief Data Officer, no later than July 1, to submit a written report to the Mayor and the Council on the status of implementation of the Policy.

What we'll share with you

• Why Open Data is important
• Benefits of Open Data
• Where we are today
• How we got here
• What we found
• Where we're going

Why Open Data is

important to the City

• Provide high quality public service
• Work in partnership with all our communities to achieve safe and livable neighborhoods
• Create and sustain a resilient, economically prosperous city

Opening data ties in directly with each of our Strategic Goals and allows us to monitor our progress.

Why Open Data is important

As a Resident

• Look at the city budget 
• Pull in a calendar of events into my phone
• Avoid construction in my commute
• See when my street or sidewalk will be fixed

As a City Employee

• Access data from other departments
• Be transparent
• Reduce time responding to PRA

Benefits of Open Data

• Improve service delivery without increasing resources
• Facilitate intra-departmental data sharing

• Build and integrate city data into applications
• Provide most up-to-date and accurate data to consumers

• Provide city data to power new businesses and startups

Efficiency

Empowerment

Economic Development

Where We Are Today

• Issued inventory guidelines in March
• Designated information coordinators
• Acquired base knowledge of City information
• Identified individuals working with specific sets of data
• Completed preliminary inventory

How We Got Here

• Databases
• Department spreadsheets
• Shared drives
• Online apps

1. Identify data sources

How We Got Here

What are all the single datasets
you can pull from the data sources?

2. Identify all datasets

How We Got Here

The individual in charge of the datasets – the Data Steward – answers questions
about the data and completes a catalog.

3. Complete dataset catalog

The Backend

We minimized in-person meetings and automated as much as we could, relying heavily on technology.

The Backend

Internal dashboards and metrics tracked
each department's progress.

What We Found

• 2000+ Datasets
• 800 Datasources
• Lots of low hanging fruit

Observations 

• Amazing talent among our City workforce
• Potential for internal efficiencies
• Need to align open data program with technology initiatives
• Smart communication is key

Feedback Received

"We need to increase capacity for managing and analyzing data within my department."

"My department needs to focus on setting an end goal, and measuring our work by data to back it up."

"My department needs to be more explicit in our data collection methodologies."

Community Engagement

Where We're NOT Going

Where We're Going

• Timely
• Well-Described
• Reliable 
• Complete
• Used

Where We're Going

Find

Prioritize

Describe

Clean / Transform

Evaluate

Publish

Update

• Value
• Security
• Quality 
• Readiness

Where We're Going

Prioritize

Components

• Base metadata in inventory
• Metadata Schema
• Each Dataset
• Conform to Federal Open Standards

Where We're Going

Describe

• How is the data collected?
• Are there more reliable sources?
• Can we merge the sources together?
• Is the data of high quality?
• Are there gaps in the data that prevent analysis?
• Is there Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in text fields?

Where We're Going

Evaluate

• Systematically Remove PII
• Mold to standard or tidy data
• Combine multiple sources
• Make data useful

Where We're Going

Clean / Transform

Where We're Going

Publish and Update

Today

Manual

Find

Prioritize

Describe

Clean / Transform

Evaluate

Publish

Update

Automatic

Tomorrow

Manual

Find

Prioritize

Describe

Clean / Transform

Evaluate

Publish

Update

Automatic

An Example

The Vision

Get the proper stakeholders with the right skills,

involved in a timely manner,

equipped with the appropriate technology and accurate data

to facilitate good decisions

and innovative solutions for our residents.

See this

presentation Online!

Presentation: 

http://sdgo.io/od-council-15