HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 5981
City of Palo Alto (ID # 5981)
City Council Staff Report
Report Type: Study Session Meeting Date: 4/4/2016
City of Palo Alto Page 1
Summary Title: Open Data and City Apps Presentation
Title: Open Data Presentation
From: City Manager
Lead Department: IT Department
Recommendation:
Staff recommends that Council receive an update on the City’s open data and online digital
services and offer comments and questions.
Executive Summary:
The City of Palo Alto open data portal—an award winning community service-- has helped make
City data sets publicly available since it was launched in 2012. It has enabled the City to
proclaim itself “Open Data by Default” in early 2014. The City also have a large number of other
online digital services that help citizens interact and do business with the City virtually either via
a website or through an app. This presentation will provide some background and overview
information on our open data portal and a selection of our online digital services.
Background:
Open Data is public data that is freely used and available for citizens, developers, and other
community members to analyze, build, and use to build useful solutions.
In February of 2014, City Council issued the open data proclamation, ensuring open data was
the default moving forward. Since then, the City has won multiple awards for its data efforts
and spans three solutions: one for budget, one for map and location based data, and one for
other structured data.
Currently, the open data platform contains data such as local business information; 311
requests; water usage; salary information; the current budget; and tree data. This data can
provide benefits such as an alternate to California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests;
transparency in City operations; and data for stakeholders to analyze and build their own
solutions.
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Our diverse and popular digital services provide the ability for citizens to interact with the City
online to report broken sidewalks; pay parking tickets; pay their Utility bill; use online library
services; view creek levels; register for classes, and so much more.
Discussion:
The City of Palo Alto has published 68 data sets and deployed over 50 digital services. These
services are frequently recognized nationally and often globally for their quality and capability
particularly for a city the size of Palo Alto. For this study session, the IT department will present
highlights of the Open Data platform, our web and mobile applications, and their benefits to
the community.
Quick Reference:
Open Data Platform: http://data.cityofpaloalto.org
Online Services: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/services/online.asp