[Below is what I sent to Tampa City Council last week and a similar message to the mayor’s office. I’m not sure I’m the most articulate messenger but we are at the start of the budget cycle so I put a stake in the ground.]

Council members,

I shared this with the mayor’s office last week:

A real world example of open data and digital services:

Fire union president stated they’ve been having difficulty getting data through public records request during the discussion at city council about the master plan.

That is public data. It should be open. If it was published in a machine readable format as is required at the federal level, someone could build a real time dashboard with historical graphs. The GIS maps could be dynamically updated. We wouldn’t be trying to make decisions about tens of millions of dollars and the public safety with stale data.  While also reducing friction and improve efficiencies in the public records request process while also providing more transparency and accountability.

I suspect there’s also open police data that is frequently requested through public records requests. Same applies here.

I dove into the Climate Action & Equity Plan over the weekend and skipped ahead to the Governance section. 

Item 4 – ” Expand Data and Analysis Capabilities within City Planning and Operations.”

Enhancing the City’s data capabilities will help us to make smart and data-driven decisions. It will also provide a tool to monitor our progress, ensuring that work is being done to secure the city’s future.

Included in the section is a recommendation to hire a data manager.

I couldn’t agree more.

I think it is the perfect opportunity for the city to adopt an open data policy. Here’s example language used by Cape Coral (and many other municipalities).

My preference would be for this to be done by ordinance vs administrative policy but I’d be thrilled for any formal acknowledgment of open data as policy.