Government Technology

Open the data and the citizen miners will come — and they just might develop an app, map or other innovative product not yet envisioned by busy local government officials.

Clicking on a dot takes users to a synopsis of the project, and there’s a button at the bottom of each synopsis that navigates to Planning’s existing website, where users can find full documents such as Preliminary Project Assessments, Shadow Studies, and Discretionary Review filings.

The platform is intended to help its audiences — citizens, public employees, and businesses — with their own decision-making and "evidence-informed analysis," and to encourage the independent development of visualizations and applications.

Utah is aiming to have all state and local open data online by December 2016

CIOs need to invest more effort in building dashboards to track critical projects and feedback from key stakeholders.

Typically a chief data officer sets data retention, sharing and publication policies, and engages the civic hacking community and internal staff to use the data to drive innovation.

He shows how a combination of unexpected questions and smart data crunching can produce strangely useful insights, and shares tips on how to release large sets of data so that anyone can use them.

"This is actually going to be very helpful for not only keeping track of what our peer states are doing, but informing our decisions."

"There are all sorts of projects we want public input so we need to make sure people are informed."

This site may be used to research permit records by anyone. When registered with the City, users can review or request inspections and check permit status online.