City of Kingston builds transparent data culture through data marketplace
monthly users
datasets
monthly API downloads
Company profile
Home to over 120,000 people, the City of Kingston in Canada has a clear vision to provide its residents and businesses with a smart, livable, modern city, built on access to world-class education and research institutions, advanced healthcare facilities, affordable living and vibrant entertainment and tourism activities.
Sector
Local government
Location
Canada
Data leader
Challenges: promoting open government principles through data
Kingston understood the importance of data to deliver on this aim, both externally and internally. This push for openness was backed up by a need to meet legislative requirements around data sharing, and to ensure the process was as efficient and streamlined as possible.
"Throughout the organization, staff understand that the information we handle is not our data but instead belongs to our citizens. It is our responsibility as a City to share it as seamlessly and openly as possible to demonstrate transparency and accountability."
Data Experience : extending data sharing to become data-centric
While we had begun to initially share data via downloads on a website or by manually responding to incoming requests we knew we required a more robust solution that was:
- Self-service: enabling users to quickly and easily discover, explore and download the datasets they needed
- Scalable: providing a large number of datasets to internal and external audiences in formats that best suited their requirements
- Efficient: minimizing administration and saving time while encouraging internal departments to share their data.
We launched our Open Data Kingston marketplace in 2018 initially focused on sharing spatial/GIS data, such as engineering and planning information, with developers and utilities. However, accelerated by the City’s commitment to ensure its data is open by default, the portal quickly grew to cover information from other areas. This has been driven by requests from internal departments, Councillors and citizens, with datasets available to both internal and external audiences through Kingston’s portal, including via a range of user-friendly dashboards.
As part of Kingston Fire & Rescue (KFR)’s desire to increase openness and accountability, our data team created an interactive dashboard and map. This visualizes and displays data, such as showing key metrics including average response times, average incident duration, locations, and the number of units dispatched. Filterable by date, it increases understanding of KFR’s workload while holding it to account.
Following the success of the fire & rescue dashboard, the City Council requested a dashboard to show citizen service (311) requests. This enables Councillors to see what types of requests are being generated in their individual electoral wards and what percentage are being resolved.
As the portal has grown, it is being increasingly used to deliver transparency around decisionmaking. While information on areas such as financial disclosures made by Councillors or decisions taken by the mayor have always been publicly available, adding them to the portal makes them easier to access. Citizens can now see any financial disclosures made by Councillors around specific motions, as well as compensation and expenses they have been paid. Further increasing transparency, progress on capital projects is also tracked and made available through maps and tables.
To make interacting with the City easier and more seamless, we have created the MyKingston web app.. This provides a one-stop shop for citizens to access City services, providing them with a personalized view of their city, based on their address. All of the data flows from the Open Data Kingston portal, automatically delivering all relevant information, such as parking zones, local amenities, and the electoral district through a single, tailored view.
Creating a Data-Centric culture
While initially data sharing aimed to benefit external stakeholders, the process of collecting and sharing has increased awareness of the importance of data internally too. Departments understand that data sharing helps them meet their priorities, leading to a major growth in datasets on the portal. Data is also now being shared internally, through dashboards and visualizations, with greater use of data analysis within each department, and a strong pipeline of datasets ready to be shared. Contracts with suppliers, such as around construction projects, include provisions to mandate the sharing of relevant data, further increasing accountability and openness.
Huwise: The All-In-One platform for Data Sharing at the City Of Kingston
After deciding to create our data portal, we researched the options available, choosing to work with Huwise. We are especially benefiting from three Huwise features:
Intuitive Data Management
We have a vision for departmental data owners to be able to upload and manage their own data assets on the portal. Huwise’s user-friendly, intuitive management capabilities and range of features enable this change to happen over time, while also allowing the portal to be currently managed by a team of one.
Multiple Workspaces
Within the data marketplace solution, Huwise provides two workspaces – one for the external, public data portal and a second for internal use. This means that specific datasets can be shared internally and externally as required, all managed through the same solution. This increases flexibility, reduces administration time and ensures that the portal is a one-stop shop for data across our organization.
Seamless sharing through Apis and Dashboards
When we began our program, we understood that it needed to make data available in different ways to different internal and external users. Thanks to Huwise we are able to share data through tables, visualizations and dashboards, while widgets embed data in pages on the City of Kingston website. The new MyKingston web app is powered by APIs that link directly to data on Open Data Kingston, automating the generation of personalized web pages for citizens.
Results: putting data at the heart of the city's operations
Through data portal, the City of Kingston is delivering on its objective of delivering open, efficient government, with key results in three areas:
- Delivering Transparency Across Its Operations
Thanks to the data shared via Open Data Kingston, citizens, businesses and other stakeholders have a clear view of how the City operates. They can see detailed information on their Councillors, as well as monitoring performance in areas such as fire & rescue and service requests. Explanatory notes attached to datasets deliver additional context to help understanding. Overall, this approach helps increase trust with citizens and drives greater engagement.
- Building An Internal Data Culture
While we began with a focus on sharing data externally, extending our portal has supported the growth of an internal data culture, built on data sharing that is open by default. There is now much greater understanding of the data available within the organization, with many datasets and dashboards shared internally. Departments are now enthusiastic consumers of data, with employees increasingly using it within their working lives.
- Extending Data Sharing Across The Organization
Open Data Kingston is now an important portal for accessing data about the City. Recent additions include updated census data and information on homelessness, helping inform the public and provide vital data for employees. Overall, the portal is now seeing 3,000 external monthly users, as well as an average of 182,408 monthly API calls.
"Over the course of the program we've really widened the types of data that are being shared. We began with GIS data to increase efficiency - now we're covering data from across the organization, especially around transparency and are focused on using data to support our wider priorities, both internally and externally."
"The success of the City of Kingston demonstrates how creating a data portal helps extend sharing and builds a vibrant internal data culture. Alongside efficiency and transparency, it is now using data across the organization to aid better decisionmaking and create new services for its citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders."
About the Data leader
Jess Rogers
Data Architect, City of Kingston
Jess Rogers is Data Architect at Data Architect
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