Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Transparency Open Data topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Board advances open-data ordinance to first reading, mayor’s office says it complements Sunshine Ordinance
Summary
An ordinance to establish a city open-data policy and require departments to post machine-readable datasets passed on first reading. The mayor’s office said the ordinance would complement, not replace, the Sunshine Ordinance by requiring specific datasets to be made publicly available in machine-readable form.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed on first reading an ordinance that would establish San Francisco’s open-data policy, directing city departments to make defined datasets available to the public in machine-readable formats.
Jason Elliott of the mayor’s office told the board the ordinance would codify an executive directive previously issued by the mayor and would not conflict with the Sunshine Ordinance. He said open data represents a different form of transparency by compelling departments to post editable, machine-readable spreadsheets to a centralized portal, enabling both accountability and the development of private-sector web or mobile applications.
Elliott said the ordinance specifies datasets as defined by the city’s COIT codes and clarified the requirements were not for static PDFs but for downloadable, machine-readable files that can be used to analyze city data. Supervisor Daly asked whether metadata would also be posted; the mayor’s office representative said the ordinance requires specific types of datasets and that metadata conventions are referenced in the ordinance and COIT code.
Supervisor Daley indicated he had received a communication from an open-data advocate who questioned whether the ordinance was necessary, and he asked the mayor’s office to weigh in. The mayor’s office said it believed the ordinance is not duplicative and instead provides an additional channel of openness that complements existing Sunshine rules.
The ordinance passed first reading; departments will be required to follow the city’s COIT-defined data types and to post datasets in formats usable for accountability and application development. Further committee or administrative steps will follow before final adoption.
