SAN DIEGO -- From street sweeping schedules to transactions at parking meters, the city of San Diego Monday announced that 44 sets of data were placed online to give the public and software developers easy access to frequently requested information.
The facts are included in an open data portal at data.sandiego.gov, which went live on Friday.
"Transparency and efficiency should be a part of every local government's DNA, which is why we've put such an emphasis on that here in San Diego with our open data portal," Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. "The portal will give app developers, software engineers and the public the opportunity to use this data in innovative ways that we haven't even dreamed of yet."
City officials said they plan to update the majority of the datasets so that the public receives reliable, up-to-date information in an easy-to-use format.
San Diego Chief Data Officer Maksim Pecherskiy worked with departments across the city to provide the information and create several examples of what can be done with data.
"San Diego's new open data portal goes above and beyond what software developers and visualization experts expect from governments," Pecherskiy said.
"Typically, agencies toss up a bunch of data on a portal and call it a day, but transparency means a lot more to us than that," he said. "Our team took the time to understand the data, explain the data and simplify the data available in this portal so that you don't need to be a computer programmer to view it, analyze it or build with it."
Among other datasets included in the portal are the Development Services Department's project tracking system dating back to 2003; drinking water quality tests; billing for leases on city-owned properties; average daily vehicle counts on roadways over the past dozen years; the city treasurer's list
of businesses in San Diego; bicycle routes; land use and zoning data; city right-of-way boundaries; and a list of calls dispatched by police last year and so far this year.
More datasets are scheduled to be released in the coming months.
