Los Angeles' Open Data Day Competition
In honor of International Open Data Day on March 5th, the Mayor's Data Team hosted a competition that asked city departments to publish, update, and archive their datasets. The goal was to improve the quantity and quality of datasets on our open data portal. The competition ran through the month of February and was judged by a panel of data and community-based organizations like LA Tech4Good, Data.org, USC's Neighborhood Data for Social Change, Inclusive Action, Socrata/Tyler Tech and ESRI.
The judging committee decided on two awards: the Department Data Champion award which recognizes the overall quality and quantity of data, as well as the variety of data assets published, and the Data Impact award which recognizes high-value datasets that are particularly impactful to the community.
Below is a list of winners and some of their datasets:
Department of City Planning: Department Data Champion
- General Plan Land Use: The General Plan is the fundamental land use policy document of the City of Los Angeles. Decisions by the City with regard to the use of land; design and character of buildings and open space, conservation of existing housing and provision for new housing; provisions for the continued updating of the infrastructure; protection of environmental resources; protection of residents from natural and man-made hazards; and allocation of fiscal resources are guided by the Plan.
- Business Improvement District: A business improvement district is a geographically defined area within the City of Los Angeles, in which services, activities and programs are paid for through a special assessment
- Bicycle Enhanced Networks: The Bicycle Enhanced Network (BEN) and Bicycle Line Networks (BLN) are networks of streets that will receive treatments that prioritize bicyclists.
- Transit Enhanced Networks: The proposed Transit Enhanced Network (TEN) will improve existing and future bus service on arterial streets by prioritizing improvements for transit riders.
- Vehicle Enhanced Networks: The proposed Vehicle Enhanced Network (VEN) consists of enhancements, on a select group of streets, to prioritize the efficient movement of motor vehicles.
- Pedestrian Enhanced Networks: The Pedestrian Enhanced Districts (PED) are an analysis of a snapshot in time of areas where pedestrian improvements are prioritized relative to other modes. These areas may be located near schools, transit stations, areas of high pedestrian activity, areas with high collision frequency, or other placemaking opportunity areas.
Ethics Commission: Data Impact Award
- Behested Payments: Payments of $5,000 or more that were made at the behest of City officials.
- Campaign Expenditures: Political fundraising activities for City candidates and elected officeholders.
Other high-value department datasets submitted included:
LADOT
- Parking meter occupancy: provides insight into economic activity and which neighborhoods are “parkable"
- Parking citations: provides insight into real-time ticketing and citations
Office of Finance
- Business Registration by Fiscal Year: provides valuable information on business creation by year
- Women & Minority Owned Businesses: high-level overview of the percentage of businesses by year
Bureau of Engineering
- Permit Information: Construction permits within the City’s public right-of-way, which generally consists of street easements that contain City streets, lanes, alleys, parkways, and sidewalks. The public right-of-way also includes public easements and unimproved streets.