Baton Rouge is seeking public input on its recently-unveiled open data policy, as officials set out to expand the Open Data BR system to make it “open by default.”
Broome’s administration this week introduced the draft policy, which would require local agencies to “proactively release” all public data available. The goal of the proposal is to codify various datasets to ensure public data is released automatically, and is the product of the city’s partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Sunlight Foundation.
The Open Data BR system, which was launched under former Mayor Kip Holden, is a collection statistics and other information that the public can view online. A growing number of cities have varying degrees of open data policies, and the program was one of the factors that landed Baton Rouge on a list of top digital mid-sized cities this week.
“The expansion of our open data program will dramatically improve public transparency, accountability, and your ability to get public information from us,” city-parish Information Systems Director Eric Romero says in an email.
Aside from the transparency aspect, city officials hope to eventually gain insights from the data for policymaking, as well as have members of the public interact in real time to make services more efficient. LSU is expected to begin work analyzing the city’s open data to find trends.
