KCK opens up data portal for transparency, ‘public good’

In an effort to increase transparency and improve services, the City of Kansas City, Kan. is offering access to large swaths of public data via a portal that makes the information more digestible.

Thanks to a new open data administrative order, KCK launched its new data portal Thursday for residents to see such information as property records, code infractions, expenditures, streets, recreation and more. City officials hope that the web-based interface will encourage residents, techies, nonprofits and businesses to further the public good.

The open data administrative order and portal emerged from the city’s work with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, which in part spurs the development of better open data practices. The effort also helped KCK to produce policies and processes to inventory, prioritize, release and maintain data publicly.

KCK Mayor Mark Holland said that he hopes the portal will help address a widespread abandoned property issue in the community.

“The housing and blight data now available in the portal will help us work with neighborhood and non-profit groups to create smarter, stronger solutions to address blighted properties,” Holland said in a release. “We can use better data to improve the health and vitality of our community.”

KCK’s new chief knowledge officer, Alan Howze, has been tasked with leading an open data committee that will develop data standards, identify new data sets to be released and provide an annual update on open data to the unified city-and-county commission.

Howze was appointed to his role with KCK in August to oversee the government’s IT department, the 311 service center and mapping group. He’s also working closely with Kansas City, Missouri’s chief innovation officer, Bob Bennett, to learn best practices and to identify potential collaboration opportunities between the two cities.

Check out the new KCK data portal by clicking here.