San Diego, San Francisco Focus on Data to Help Address Civic Issues

It’s encouraging to see that two major cities in California are turning to data to help solve civic problems.

The city of San Diego recently announced a $50,000 app challenge to “enhance city services and quality of life for San Diegans.” Data from kidsdata.org are among the many official data sources from which users can draw data for this challenge. Community members already have suggested ideas for apps that would map neighborhood air quality; provide nutritional information for local restaurants; assist in enrolling children in school; and list school testing results.

In San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee last week announced a 2012 Innovation Portfolio that, among other initiatives, will provide coders with access to city data. Roughly 60 apps already have been built with data from San Francisco, and the city will look to legislation to make datasets more accessible to the public.

Our foundation, too, has participated in a data challenge. See this blog post, “Developers Find Intriguing Ways to Display Data from Kidsdata.org,” for information on the results, which were announced last June.

Posted by Andy Krackov

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