Open Data
Issue: Expanding Democracy
Target Level of Office: Local
Policy Origin: City Council of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Link: www.YEONetwork.org/2013policy/?i=262
YEO Sponsor:
Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak
Summary Narrative of the Policy: This ordinance encourages transparency and open government
by mandating that a community proactively publish data and data-containing information through
a municipally-maintained web portal. This legislation takes into account privacy concerns, and
aligns the proposal with state and federal privacy limitations.
Relevant Talking Points & Important Information:
• According to the Open Knowledge Foundation, open government data promotes
transparency, accountability, participatory governance, innovation, and government
efficiency.
• This legislation seeks to:
• Promote openness and transparency by setting data publishing standards to be
open by default.
• Make all published data machine-readable, allowing for the creation of applications
that can automatically read and interpret the information.
• Use the above standards to save the community time and money by promoting
interoperability and communication among community agencies through the
sharing of collected data.
• Reduce the cost to the community incurred by complying with Freedom of
Information requests.
• Improve the ability of the community to work with area municipalities by sharing
information freely and collaboratively.
• Foster innovation among the community by allowing citizen coders to develop
software applications and tools to collect, organize, and share public data.
Policy
2014 Book
Local Level
97