Society | DOI: 10.1145/2184319.2184326
Leah Hoffmann
Data Mining
Meets City hall
Local and national governments are turning to open data
to cut their costs, increase transparency and efficiency, and
respond to the needs of citizens.
By noW, the refrain is famil- iar to many New Yorkers: “In God we trust. Everyone else, bring data.” It is a phrase— and a mind-set—the city’s
mayor, Michael Bloomberg, tirelessly
promotes. Over the course of his 10-
year term, Bloomberg has transformed
a domain where statistical analyses
are confined to opinion polls into one
where data-driven transparency is
hailed as a means of cutting costs, increasing government efficiency, and
engaging often-jaded citizens.
The Bloomberg administration has
tracked its performance through indicators like infant mortality rates, which
have fallen by nearly 20% since Bloomberg took office in 2001, and responses
to reported emergencies, which took a
minute longer in 2011 than in 2001. It
has also used predictive analytics to investigate potential fire risks. Locations
flagged as high risk are investigated
within 48 hours, and six months after
the program’s implementation, fire
department personnel and buildings
inspectors found seriously hazardous
new york City’s chief digital officer Rachel sterne, right, at the opening press breakfast
during the first day of internet Week ny, which occurred in June 2011.
open data
PHotoGraPH by Gary He/InsIder IMaGes
“democratizes
the exchange of
information and
services,” says
Rachel sterne.
“it empowers citizens
to collaboratively
create solutions.”
living conditions in more than 75% of
their inspections, an increase of 400%
over the previous two years. And last
year the Bloomberg administration
created NYC Digital, an office whose
goal is to “realize New York City’s potential as the world’s leading digital
city.” Led by the city’s first chief digital
officer, Rachel Sterne, NYC Digital has
organized hackathons, app competitions, and other initiatives to encourage the use of municipal data.
“It democratizes the exchange of
information and services,” Sterne ex-
plained at the 2011 O’Reilly Strata
Conference in New York. “It empowers
citizens to collaboratively create solu-
tions. It’s not just the consumption but
the coproduction of government ser-
vices and democracy.”
Increasingly, New York is not alone
in its commitment to open data and
transparency. North American cities
like Chicago, Portland, San Francisco,
and Vancouver have begun to release
their datasets. The U.S. government
has also done so, as have the govern-
ments of Australia, Estonia, New Zea-
land, Norway, and the United King-
dom, along with global organizations
like the United Nations and the World
Bank. The catalysts for their change
are varied, but recession-squeezed
budgets often play a significant role.