City of Salinas drives transparency and collaboration through open data

We focus on using data to drive transparency, and we are one of the first 50 cities in the United States to be certified by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative.

As part of our focus on transparency and ensuring effectiveness, we wanted to make data a central part of its operations, with up-to-date, relevant information shared both externally with citizens and businesses and internally between city departments to drive collaboration and become truly data-driven.

When beginning our open data program, we set out key objectives and metrics. We wanted the program to:

• Help the city make government more transparent and accountable
• Reduce the effort and cost of providing information to external audiences, including innovators and entrepreneurs
• Improve internal collaboration through data sharing between departments and agencies to solve complex problems

In 2018 Salinas engaged with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, a program that works with local governments to help them better use data to inform policy and funding decisions, improve services, create operational efficiencies, and engage residents.

Using a grant from the program we created an open data governance structure and committee, and selected Huwise to deliver the data marketplace technology platform to underpin our open data marketplace. Through research, we understood that our portal had to meet the needs of three distinct audiences:

• Data experts who want to manipulate and reuse data,
• Entrepreneurs connecting to the portal through APIs,
• Citizens who want to find and view data in a straightforward, visual way.

The portal was therefore created to deliver experiences for all three of these personas, as well as being available to internal staff to improve collaboration and decision-making. All datasets on the portal go through a comprehensive data audit process before being published, with the City’s open data committee selecting priority data to make available, based on the needs of the three audiences.

One notable use of data is to underpin the Community Alliance for Safety and Peace (CASP) program, a community
initiative involving multiple groups to target youth and gang violence. This uses data, such as on crime rates, socio-economic information and school performance to structure the program, focus strategies and approaches, and monitor progress. The resulting data-driven program has reduced youth violence by over 60% in the last decade, helping build a stronger, more peaceful community.

Citizens and businesses can now automatically visit the portal and find the information they need, including anonymized crime data, mobility data on traffic and bikeways, and the marker information used by engineering companies when carrying out construction work in Salinas. Data can be downloaded in multiple formats, visualized through maps and dashboards or automatically connected to through APIs for every dataset.

Our open data is also underpinning new, entrepreneurial businesses, including in smart transportation and even by providing data on pharmacies licensed to sell cannabis under state law.

New datasets can be added quickly in response to demand, providing proactive answers that drive greater transparency and effectiveness. Moving forward Salinas is looking to increase the focus on data-driven storytelling, increasing the number of visualizations and dashboards that display information in ways that are easy to understand by non-experts, democratizing data sharing and further increasing openness and understanding.

Following a comprehensive RFP process, Salinas chose Huwise based on the strengths of its technology and the comprehensive support the company provides. By using Huwise’s easy-to-use data product marketplace we are able to manage, publish and share data with all its audiences, benefiting from three key features in particular:

By embracing open data and working with Huwise, we are building a platform for data-centric government. It is seeing
key benefits in three specific areas:

Sharing information via the open data marketplace not only makes it available externally, but also internally. This breaks down departmental silos and enables teams to work together on complex programs, such as CASP, using data to share information and drive greater collaboration.

Previously providing information in response to incoming requests was a time-consuming, manual process, involving locating data, transforming it to be in the correct format and then supplying it. Making data automatically available via the data marketplace, in all popular formats, automates the process, increasing eciency and providing tangible ROI across the 270,000 API requests Salinas receives every year.

Salinas is now able to easily share data with citizens, organizations and agencies, increasing transparency around government activities and providing information that can be used for innovative new businesses. By focusing on data storytelling through visualizations and dashboards Salinas is further increasing openness and engagement.