How Naperville plans to improve public data access

Naperville is the first city in Illinois to join an initiative that promotes widespread sharing of government data in a usable format to give insight to businesses, inform policy decisions and solve problems.

Naperville's participation in the What Works Cities initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies began Monday and is expected to continue for three months as the city crafts an open data policy and prepares for the release of more - and more useful - information.

Experts from the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that works to increase government transparency and accountability, will help the city understand the fundamentals of open data; build policies that address concerns with privacy, liability, risk, security and technical issues; and explain its open data efforts to the public.

What Works Cities aims to engage 100 cities that have between 100,000 and 1 million residents in three years. The project began last year and Naperville is part of a group of 12 communities announced Monday that are progressing through the program together. Other new participants include Baltimore, Maryland; Buffalo, New York; Cape Coral and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Greensboro, North Carolina; Gresham, Oregon; Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita, Kansas; Providence, Rhode Island; and Scottsdale, Arizona.

"Naperville was chosen as a What Works City because Mayor (Steve) Chirico and city leaders demonstrated a strong commitment to utilizing data and evidence to improve life for Naperville residents and the capacity to collaborate with our expert partners to expand the city's use of data and evidence," said Sharman Stein, What Works Cities spokeswoman.

Providing open data can change the way local democracy works by building a new relationship with the public, said Stephen Larrick, open data project leader for the Sunlight Foundation. If access to public data is no longer centralized to a powerful elected few, residents and business owners with expertise in, say, electric infrastructure or traffic management, could feel welcomed and empowered to offer solutions to city problems.

This has proved successful in places like Seattle, where software developers created a transportation-tracking smartphone app based on the city bus system's release of data, Larrick said. Other What Works Cities participants have used data internally to save money when responding to fire false alarms or calls for minor paramedic assistance.

"Governments take the information and public records and data that they have internally and say, 'The public owns this and there's value that can come from sharing this broadly,'" Larrick said. "Let's get it out there."

In Naperville, the initiative comes as the city is beginning to improve its software so all departments can use data in a streamlined way. The goal is to offer constituents the ability to apply for, pay for, track, schedule and receive services such as building permits and inspections - all through the website.

Chirico says that goal is several years away, as the first department to begin using the upgraded software system is set to come online in 2018. But why not start now with providing more data to anyone who wants to access it, he says.

"Once this information has been identified and put in a usable format and made available to the public," he said, "then it becomes a very, very useful tool."

The city already has a real-time snow plowing map, and employees post budgets, financial reports, parking studies, traffic studies and all kinds of permit and license forms on its website.

But most of these data features are PDFs, static documents that don't allow for easy review or comparison. Plus, Deputy City Manager Marcie Schatz said most documents have to be posted manually, stealing staff time that could be spent on other work. The software improvement project will allow data to be updated automatically, and experts in the What Works Cities program will give guidance on best practices for sharing it.

"The goal is we want to make the data useful for people and that they can analyze it," Schatz said.

Popular data sets include crime statistics, maps, financial data and building permit lists, but part of Naperville's work will be to determine what information will be most valuable for release.

Naperville's participation in What Works Cities also includes assistance in performance management from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence. Schatz said this will help the city form a data-driven system to track its progress toward citywide and departmental goals and adjust course if necessary.

"Are these decisions that we're making supported by real-live needs and data?" Chirico said. "Without information, it's hard to make good policy decisions."