What does it take to be a data-driven city government? Over the past year, for the City of Syracuse, it has meant a multi-pronged approach. Among our more visible projects is a partnership with Esri we expanded our snowplow map into a winter weather operations tool, tracking the updated sensors in our snow-plowing operations, which received over 10 thousand visits in the first storm of the last season alone and was recognized with an award for Special Achievement in GIS. We have also taken a performance-based approach to implementing the American Rescue Plan injection of $123 million dollars, with a public-facing dashboard that provides updated insights into how well we are spending federal spending dollars, and has been recognized as a national case study. And working side-by-side with our department of public works, we’ve piloted the inclusion of equity metrics in our road reconstruction investments.
Moving Towards a New Data Platform
Moving towards a data platform for our city should allow API and other departments both to simplify our operational workstreams and vastly improve our analytical abilities moving forward. Though this prospect is exciting to us over here in data land, oftentimes talking about data infrastructure can easily drift into getting lost in the weeds of acronym soup. So, in an attempt to stave off this fate we’ve decided that rather than discussing the new platform from a strictly technical approach it might be more prudent to take the “5,000-foot view” and attempt to explain more or less:
What’s a data platform and why do we need one?
In what ways will a data platform deliver value to not only city departments, but city residents as well?