How the city of Boston is making its data accessible to everyone
Originally written and posted to the Knight Foundation’s Blog for April 2016
Boston is a city with a distinguished history of firsts.
For example, the nation’s first public park, Boston Common, was designated way back in 1634. The Mather School founded in Dorchester in 1639 is the first public elementary school in America. The Boston Public Library (BPL) shares a notable history as well. BPL is the first library to lend books to the public and the first library to establish a branch system. To honor this rich tradition and kick-start the open data to open knowledge project, one of the first open data initiatives to collaborate closely with libraries, the Boston open data team hosted the city’s first-ever Data Coordinator Summit at BPL’s Commonwealth Salon on March 30, 2016.
On this beautiful Wednesday afternoon, approximately 70 city employees descended upon BPL to learn about Boston’s newest open data project to democratize access to city data. The audience was particularly special because the attendee list included the newly identified data coordinators from an overwhelming majority of the city’s 45 departments. The Summit not only convened key city employees but it also served as a great platform to share the vision and importance of data and open data within the city.
As noted by Boston’s CIO, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, open data has the potential to spur government transparency and accountability while creating an ecosystem of innovation. A point illustrated by another Summit presenter, Mapkin, a software developer that exposes city data on their mobile application to provide drivers with localized GPS directions. Additionally, Northeastern Professor O’Brien provided a brief perspective into his research that is made possible by open access to the city’s 311 data.
BPL President David Leonard nicely grounded the conversation with his remarks that articulated the enduring importance of libraries as community centers of learning. This key observation serves as the foundation for this open data initiative and was recently quantified in a Pew Research Center survey that found that nearly 80% of Americans wanted their libraries to offer programming on digital tools.
As we set out to complete much of the upcoming work outlined during the Summit, we hope to work closely with each of the department level data coordinators to learn from their vast institutional knowledge. By partnering and working collaboratively, we aim to create an enduring open data resource and a supporting curriculum for librarians to democratize access to data for all users.
