Swapping Insights with Colleagues from South Bend, Indiana
Earlier this year, we had an opportunity to host the Innovation & Technology team from South Bend, Indiana for a knowledge exchange session covering data management, open data, performance management, and various other topics. Simply put, we learned a lot from what they shared – starting with the elegance of their team’s motto “listen first, build with.”
Smart Shoveling: Creating a Data Tool for Fire Hydrant Snow Removal
Big snowstorms have serious implications for city operations, with one lesser-known impact being that the Syracuse Fire Department (SFD) has to shovel all of the roughly 5,700 fire hydrants in the city. The Fire Department recognized an opportunity to track the status of hydrant shoveling in real time and, consequently, to better allocate their resources during a storm. So, SFD approached our Office of Analytics, Performance, and Innovation (API).
Syracuse's First Open Data Day
Syracuse held its first Open Data Day on Saturday November 4th at the Onondaga County Public Library in Downtown Syracuse. Over 100 participants came together to celebrate civic open data, attend educational sessions (on topics ranging from how to use Tableau to the synergy between urbanism, AR and open data portals) and engage in a hackathon focused on transportation data.
Data-driven Success in the Sanitation Cart Rollout
Over the last year and a half our team in the Office of Analytics, Performance and Innovation team worked with the Department of Public Works, Communications, SYRCityline and other departments to coordinate the rollout of standardized, 96-gallon sanitation carts for City residents. Our team leveraged a data-driven approach to help facilitate the rollout and measure the success of a phased approach.
API’s Takeaway from NYC School of Data 2023
API had the opportunity to attend the conclusion of New York City’s Open Data Week this year. This event was organized by the City of New York’s Office of Technology and Innovation as well as BetaNYC, which is a community group that helps to educate and organize community events community members on New York City’s open data. …
Making Payments Easier Starts with the End User
In early 2020, API participated in a 10-week learning opportunity through What Works Cities at Results for America focused on helping cities learn how to take immediate steps toward ending or reducing the impact of driver’s license suspension in their communities. In the US, driver’s license suspension due to nonpayment of fines and penalties, or failure to appear for traffic court, is legal in many states and municipalities but results in loss of economic opportunity, and autonomy, and reduces public safety. The opportunity, hosted by What Works Cities in partnership with the Fines and Fees Justice Center and the City of Durham Innovation Team, prompted us to evaluate the impact of debt-based license restrictions on our own community by looking at quantitative data on the concentration of driver’s license suspensions by census tract disaggregated by suspensions due to failure to pay or “appear.”
Improving Open Data Syracuse Through Community Feedback
One of the skills that we have in our team at the Office of Accountability, Performance & Innovation (API) is quickly finding, pulling, and using data about city operations and services. We use this data to build dashboards that track performance and make maps that staff can use to address questions in real-time. The use of this data isn’t just valuable to our departments for internal purposes, it’s also meaningful to our community members as well. There are many reasons our community members appreciate access to this data that we collect. To ensure that we are sharing the data with them in a way that is easy to access and understand we have been busy collecting resident feedback on Open Data Syracuse, our city’s open data portal.