HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-014-02/07/2017-APPROVING AND ADOPTING AN OPEN DATA POLICY RESOLUTION 2017-014
OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FORT COLLINS
APPROVING AND ADOPTING AN OPEN DATA POLICY
WHEREAS, the City is committed to engaging the community by working with citizens
and soliciting their ideas, input, and creative energy; and
WHEREAS, the City is committed to using technology to foster open, transparent, and
accessible government; and
WHEREAS, the City is committed to maintaining the public trust through openness and
transparency; and
WHEREAS, access to public information promotes a higher level of civic engagement
and allows citizens to provide valuable feedback to government officials regarding local issues;
and
WHEREAS, to help further these purposes, City staff has prepared the Open Data Policy,
a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit"A" and incorporated herein by reference; and
WHEREAS, one goal of the Open Data policy is to proactively provide information
currently sought through public records requests, thereby saving the community time, money,
and resources; and
WHEREAS, in commitment to the spirit of open government, the City will consider
public information to be open by default and will proactively publish public data and public data-
containing information, unless relevant laws permit or require the records to be withheld; and
WHEREAS, by freely sharing public data, the City seeks to develop opportunities for
increased engagement and participation for citizens of the City in achieving desired community
results; and
WHEREAS, the protection of privacy, confidentiality and security will be maintained as
a paramount priority while also advancing the government's transparency and accountability
through open data; and
WHEREAS, publishing structured, standardized data in machine-readable formats creates
new opportunities for information to be combined and visualized in new and unexpected ways,
creating a platform for niche markets to be identified and developed, and for citizens to browse,
interpret and draw attention to trends or issues with greater ease and efficiency; and
WHEREAS, the City seeks to encourage the local creative community to develop
applications, tools, and analyses to view, explore, organize, communicate, and share public data
in new and innovative ways; and
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WHEREAS, an open data platform and tools which enable citizens to access, visualize,
and analyze public information will promote greater civic engagement and encourage citizens to
provide feedback on local issues; and
WHEREAS, the City Council has determined it is in the best interest of the City to
approve and adopt the Open Data Policy.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF
FORT COLLINS as follows:
Section 1. That the City Council hereby makes and adopts the determinations and
findings contained in the recitals set forth above.
Section 2. That the Open Data Policy attached hereto as Exhibit "A" is hereby
approved and adopted.
Passed and adopted on at a regular meeting of the Council of the City of Fort Collins this
7th day of February, A.D. 2017.
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EXHIBIT A
Open Data Policy
February 7, 2017
It is the policy of the City that public data will be made open and freely available to all
online in a machine-readable, open format that can be easily retrieved, downloaded in bulk
format and reused utilizing readily-available and .free web search applications and software,
subject only to valid policy, privacy, confidentiality, security, and other legal restrictions.
Definitions.
As used in this open data policy, these terms shall have the following meanings unless it
is apparent from the context that a different meaning is intended:
(1) Agency means any City office, department, commission, board, advisory
committee or other division of City'government;
(2) Data means statistical, factual, quantitative, or qualitative information that is
regularly maintained or created by or on behalf of the City;
(3) Dataset means a named collection of related records, with the collection-
containing data organized or formatted in a specific or prescribed way, often in
tabular form;
(4) Open data means public data or(information made readily available online,
utilizing best practice structures and formats when possible, with no legal
restrictions on use or reuse, unless otherwise required by law;
(5) Open data officer means the staff person designated by the City Manager to
coordinate and implement the City's open data program and policy;
(6) Open data portal means the internet site established and maintained by or on
behalf of the City, available from the City's website or its successor website;
(7) Open format means any widely-accepted, nonproprietary, searchable, platform-
independent, machine-readable method for formatting data which permits
automated processes;
(8) Protected information means any dataset or portion thereof to which the City
department or agency may deny access pursuant to any law, rule or regulation;
(9) Public data or information means any data or information generated or received
by the City that can be made public, to the extent such action is lawful and
prudent;
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(10) Publishable data means data that is not protected or sensitive and has been
prepared for release on the open data web portal; and
(11) Sensitive information means any data, which, if published on the open data portal,
could raise privacy, confidentiality or security concerns or have the potential to
jeopardize public health, safety, or welfare, to an extent greater than the potential
public benefit of publishing that data.
Procurement, processes and publishing of open data.
(a) To the extent prudent and practical, the City shall:
(1) Proactively publish high quality, public data with documentation (metadata)
online;
(2) Make publishable data freely available to all in machine-readable open formats, in
both its raw and processed form, including a description of the source and quality
of the data;
(3) Ensure publishable data is in the public domain and can be easily retrieved,
downloaded, indexed, sorted, searched, analyzed and reused utilizing readily-
available and free web search applications and software;
(4) Minimize limitations on the disclosure of public information while appropriately
safeguarding protected and sensitive information;
(5) Encourage innovative uses of the City's publishable data by agencies, the public,
and other partners; and
(6) Maintain the City's open data portal,_which shall provide a central location for
publishing City data.
(7) Procure and use efficient processes in a way that advances the policy of making
public data and information open and available through the use of open data
standards and formats, whenever possible.
(b) The development and implementation of these practices shall be overseen by the open
data officer.
(c) The requirements of this policy shall apply to all City departments and shall include data
prepared on behalf of the City by outside parties, to the extent permitted by law and
agreements with such outside party.
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Governance.
The City Manager shall designate an open data officer, who shall oversee the open data process,
including:
(1) Managing the open data portal;
(2) Working with each agency to identify a designee responsible for managing the
collection and release of data, who, in coordination with the open data officer,
shall prioritize public data for publication based on the frequency of public
records requests and additional interest from the public;
(3) Working with the City Attorney's Office to develop and implement a process for
identifying the relative level of risk and public benefit associated with potentially
sensitive and protected information, and recommending which public data should
not be published online;
(4) Overseeing the creation of a comprehensive inventory of datasets held by each
department and agency published to the open data portal and regularly updated;
(5) Establishing processes for optimizing methods of data collection, as well as
publishing datasets and creation processes to the open data portal, including
processes for ensuring that datasets contain unique identifiers and are reviewed
for use-appropriate formats, quality, timeliness, and exclusion of sensitive and
protected information; and that data published is complete, reliable, highly
detailed, and presented in a way that maximizes public connectivity;
(6) Maintaining written justification for why certain information is not published
online; and
(7) Establishing timelines, in coordination with agency and departmental designees,
for publishing public data on the open data portal.
Open data portal.
The City will establish an open data portal in March, 2017. The open data portal shall be
maintained by or on behalf of the City and shall be administered by the open data officer. The
open data portal shall be available at the City's website or a successor website. In the event a
successor website is used, the open data officer shall notify the City Council and shall provide
notice to the public on the main City website. The open data portal shall be the central location
where the City's open data can be found, and datasets published on the open data portal shall be
explicitly placed into the public domain, thereby ensuring that there are no restrictions or
requirements placed on use of these datasets.
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Open data report and review.
(a) Within one year of the effective date of the adoption of this policy, and thereafter no later
than November I of each year, the open data officer shall publicly report on the progress
toward achieving the goals of the City's open data program, an assessment of the current
scope of compliance, a list of datasets currently available on the open data portal, and a
description and publication timeline for datasets envisioned to be published on the portal
in the following year.
(b) During the review and reporting period, the open data officer should also make
suggestions for improving the City's open data management processes in order to ensure
that the City continues to move towards the achievement of the policy's goals.
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