Chapel Hill, San Diego Launch Open Data Efforts

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Chapel Hill, North Carolina and San Diego, California have launched new open data projects.

For the Chapel Hill portal, the city partnered with the local public library system to provide datasets about library use. In addition, the city has included budget information, public safety information, and data on government administration.

Chapel Hill’s portal also includes a small set of data visualization tools if users want to make maps or other images to understand the data better. The city says it plans to update the portal with additional datasets but no timeline is available on the website. City officials are also soliciting resident feedback.

In San Diego, that city’s open data portal includes 44 data sets including transit, budget and local governance information. City officials say they plan to keep the site updated with new information but no timeline has been made available as to when those updates will happen.

San Diego city government has identified over 900 datasets that will eventually be online but it could take years before all of them are published. In the interim, the starter data on both city portals is a bit light on substance. Like Chapel Hill, San Diego has included a limited set of visualization tools to help people slice and dice what has been released so far.

San Diego has been working on the site and its open data policy since 2014.

The Chapel Hill portal can be accessed here.

The San Diego portal can be accessed here.