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The City’s Open Data Portal is gaining momentum, with a further 11 data sets having been approved last month alone. With International Open Data Day taking place today, the City encourages more residents to get involved and make use of this innovative system. Read more below:
Through the Open Data Portal, the City of Cape Town’s data is incrementally released to the public in a useable format. It is available to all for free to enhance transparency and promote the use of the City’s data for broader social and economic benefit.
‘On International Open Data Day, the City would like to hear from any of our residents who have ideas for using open data, want to find an interesting project to contribute towards, or are currently developing online platforms which leverage off the data which has been made available by the City. As a well-run, opportunity city we are always encouraging developers to work with us in helping the global open data community to grow,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Corporate Services and Compliance, Councillor Xanthea Limberg.
International Open Data Day sees residents in cities around the world gathering to write applications, liberate data, create visualisations and publish analyses using open public data. It seeks to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments. The City is doing just that.
Just nine months after the portal’s inception, by the end of 2015, the City had approved and published 67 sets of City data.
In February this year, a further 11 sets were approved, including information relating to Cape Town International Airport noise cones; Koeberg nuclear power station’s 16 km Urgent Protective Action Planning Zones; City call centre statistics; and the City’s coastal water quality. These data sets will be available on the City’s website within the next week.
The City’s Open Data Portal has been used as a source of data for events like hackathons, data quests and data challenges. At these events, stakeholders are brought together to apply their minds and skills to the different ways in which data can be used. A number of ideas for potential applications are generated at these forums and some of these ideas may potentially be developed into products or apps.
Earlier this year, the City of Cape Town was also proud to accept a membership invitation from the World Council on City Data which is to be finalised shortly.
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