The city of Minneapolis has set up an Open Data Portal.
Assignment: Schedule and interview or do a produced piece that explains to our listeners what this is, and why it’s important (if it is). What can you do with this information? How useful is it?
The City of Minneapolis’ open data portal is now available to the public, allowing folks to access many types of City data online. Before now, if residents or reporters wanted much of this information, they had to formally request it from the City. The initial sets of data in the portal cover a range of City services and functions, and more data will be added in the coming months and years.
The data elements available with the launch of the open data portal include:
- 311 incidents
- Fire incidents
- Police incidents
- Crime statistics
- Open rental licenses
- Open liquor licenses
- Air quality study results
- Digital inclusion survey results
- NRP budgets
- Exact city boundaries
Minneapolis now joins 38 states and 46 cities and counties that have open data portals that have made data sets available to the public. The City of Minneapolis’ open data portal does not represent all the public information managed by the City, but it is meant to make the most frequently requested and most useful data easily accessible, and more content will be added over time.
Users can download data in various formats, visualize the data in charts and maps where available, and read metadata about the information. Users can also subscribe via RSS feed to get notified when the data is updated. Programmers can access APIs that let them use the data without needing to download anything.
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