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City to Work with National Initiative to Improve Open Data Access

via flickr.com/photos/ritahogan/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Today city officials announced that Waco was selected to participate in a nationwide initiative that aids city halls with data use to make local government more effective.

Bloomberg philanthropies launched the What Works Cities program earlier this year. The $42-million initiative provides support to now 21 mid-sized American cities in 15 different states, and will admit up to 100 on a rolling basis until 2017.

In a press release, Mayor Malcolm Duncan said the program will provide Waco “access to national organizations with expertise in managing municipal data.” He added that this would help the city to deliver “meaningful, accurate public data” to citizens.

According to the Waco Tribune-Herald,  the city will release “publishable city data” – available on a specific site – and not impede the disclosure of public information.

Support programs involved with the initiative include the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University and the Sunlight Foundation, to name a few.

The program works with participating cities to evaluate areas of data use and understand what are the best practices for using such data, and where a city could improve.