Recently, the City launched the 2020 PHL Open Data survey. By taking the survey, you can tell us how you use the City’s open data, what data you want us to release, and any challenges you face accessing or using the data. We want to better understand the value open data brings to Philadelphia residents, and the ways in which we can improve our efforts.
The survey is open until March 6, 2020. After you take the survey, please help spread the word by sharing the link with anyone else who may have feedback.
Why we’re launching a survey
Since January 2016, the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT) has released 70 new open datasets and completed 84 refreshes of previously published datasets, available at OpenDataPhilly.org. Since the creation of OpenDataPhilly.org in 2012, we have released more than 245 datasets.
As we move into a new year, we want to explore how we can continue our work to best meet the needs of residents who use the City’s open data.
The more we understand how people use open data, the more we can tailor our services by aligning our efforts to community interests. We’ve heard a few stories of how residents have used City data to:
- Build and expand businesses.
- Create new applications.
- Complete academic research or student projects.
- Write data-informed articles.
- Help organize their community to make it better, and more.
We hope to better track impact by learning more ways residents have put our data to use.
We’re also committed to releasing new, relevant, and useful data from the City government. We think a survey that can reach a broad audience will help us identify popular datasets that may not have yet been considered for release.
Putting feedback into practice
Once all the surveys are in, we aim to:
- Describe the overall impact of sharing City data.
- Highlight compelling projects.
- Review suggested datasets for the future.
- Analyze results to inform ways we can improve or tailor our efforts.
When reviewing the datasets that residents suggest for release, we will investigate whether the data exists in City government and whether it can be shared publicly. Look for an upcoming blog post summarizing what we learn and—in the interim—share the survey!
Keep in touch!
There’s lots of ways to get involved. For information about City datasets and others, go to OpenDataPhilly.org. Visit this resources page for video tutorials and links to tools to help analyze data. Follow @PHLInnovation on Twitter to get alerts on future data releases, and join us on the public open data google forum.
