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The new portal is a culmination of work started more than a decade ago, and it enables the city to move forward with its vision for open government.
“The city of Austin has been committed to transparency through open data for quite some time, and we’ve been able to demonstrate this transparency through displaying capital projects, strategic dashboards and open budget tools,” said IT Corporate Manager Divya Rathanlal in a news release.
The enterprise data platform (EDP) combined more than 4,000 assets from multiple sites, according to the statement. The platform from Tyler Technologies, the company is “powered by" Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Some moves making the portal possible:
- Rebuilding more than 250 legacy sites
- Redefining metadata standards
- Creating custom roles
- Training participants
The portal showcases the city of Austin’s commitment to open government, as outlined in its 2013 Open Government Directive.
Goals for open government include:
- Transparency
- Meaningful public participation
- Collaborating with the public and various entities
- Sharing best practices, software and resources with other governments
Community members can find family-friendly spaces such as libraries, splash pads and community events. Animal shelter data includes available animals for adoption, and the portal offers an exhaustive list of city department social media pages.
There is linked health and environmental data, such as environmental complaints and reporting on the local tree canopy. The city’s strategic performance dashboard is linked via multiple entry points. Data is searchable by natural language or by browsing category headings.
“Along with Tyler [Technologies], we’ve been able to refresh this program within our city and awaken a new interest in internal and open data, empowering department liaisons to own the publishing workflow and data life cycle. This results in more accurate and more robust data that everyone can use,” Rathanlal said.
