- November 7, 2014
- Civic Data
Each week we will bring you a summary of what happened this week on our site, on Twitter, and in the wider world of municipal data. Suggest stories on Twitter with #ThisWeekInData.
Seattle launched a digital privacy initiative designed to better show the public how it collects and uses data. To this end, a team of city officials will put together a set of privacy principles, draft a privacy statement, and develop an approach for educating city departments about privacy issues. The city will also contribute funding to a University of Washington research study examining, among other things, the potential perils of city data and generating replicable best practices for other cities.
Cincinnati is starting up an Office of Performance and Data Analytics, and it’s tapped a director to lead it. Chad Kenney Jr., the former director of Baltimore’s performance management system CitiStat, will lead Cincinnati’s new efficiency and accountability effort.
In Washington, D.C., StateTech Magazine examines how District officials are taking into account public feedback as they move forward with their open government and open data initiatives.
Across the pond, The Economist takes a look at how London and several other large British cities are beginning to use data to change the way they do business — a particular challenge in London’s decentralized government.
A new survey conducted by the International City/County Management Association found that the use of data to make measurements and inform decisions is widespread on the municipal level. Three-quarters of surveyed local governments and agencies said they evaluate the effectiveness of business incentives, and 73 percent said they run cost-benefit analyses, Governing magazine reports.
Government Technology magazine examines how new transportation technologies will provide tools to help local transportation managers collect traffic data and run analytics.
The cloud information portal CloudTweaks reports on the U.S. City Open Data Census’s crowdsourced “openness” rankings, which evaluate municipalities based on their public datasets. New York City earned the top mark, San Francisco took second, and Boston rounded out the top three.
