Burlington puts more data online

New Data Tools for Public, City Savings Identified

Brian Lowe, brian@burlingtonvt.gov Chief Innovation Officer, Burlington

Announcement

Improved Data Tools for Public, City Team
Good data management for an organization is becoming nearly as important as strong financial management. Having easy access to the different types of data the City collects can help researchers, businesses, and community members advance their work or get a better understanding of how the City is operating. And, having readily accessible data collected by multiple departments can also help City staff get information for grant applications, policy decisions, required reports, or operational evaluations that might not be accessed easily even within the City. With more than a dozen different departments and sometimes different legacy IT systems, the Mayor has requested centralized data platforms that increase opportunities for collaboration and should save City resources over time.

These factors drove the development of a new interactive dashboard, overhauled open data platform, and the first City open data policy the City Innovation & Technology (I&T) department released at the end of January. The dashboard shows City performance measures over time, and allows residents to look at particular time periods or specific data types by clicking on the various elements of the dashboard. The open data portal provides foundational City data sets in a machine readable format and in a way that can be easily exported or analyzed by the public. Carolyn Felix led this work for the I&T team. You can access the dashboard at https://www.burlingtonvt.gov/btvstat and the open data platform at https://data.burlingtonvt.gov/pages/home/. Please take a look and let us know at btvstat@burlingtonvt.gov what you think or what other information you'd like to see.