The City of Detroit is launching a new transparency initiative later today according to Mayor Mike Duggan’s office. The push for transparency follows the city’s website redesign last week.
The Mayor’s office is also releasing a weekly newsletter of key municipal statistics.
The advisory is unclear about the full details of the initiative, but the Mayor’s office did say it plans “greater transparency”. The move is notable as the city emerges from its high profile municipal bankruptcy, and has replaced an appointed emergency manager with its original, democratically elected, leadership.
Duggan has already discussed upgrades to the city’s technology systems and public services as part of the effort to recover.
A press conference will be held at 1 p.m. local time.
UPDATED:
In addition to overhauling its city website, at the press conference noted above city officials released an open data portal – https://data.detroitmi.gov/ which contains a variety of municipal data points previously unavailable to the public. Much of the data focuses on building permits and other building related information, but there are also crime reports.
The mayor also said the city would be putting financial transaction data online in the future. The portal is powered by Socrata, but through a combination of funding provided by the Socrata Foundation and Knight Foundation.
Interested individuals can also apply to be on a municipal IT and data advisory committee through the portal.
