SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) Sioux Falls has joined a national initiative that's supposed to help solve problems more effectively by making city government more transparent and accountable.
Sharman Stein with the 'What Works City's' Initiative says her experts will help the city learn how to better manage and share its flood of data and evidence on everything from streets to crime.
"How are you inventorying it? Do you know where it is in your city? And eventually are you putting it out publicly in a way that anybody, your staff and your residents, can see it." Stein explains.
Visualize a big room with all the data the city collects in easy to understand order and everybody has a door into the room. That is a word picture for what Sioux Falls hopes to accomplish online by maximizing its open data portal.
The project will include creating an inventory of the city's data resources, developing a plane for data governance, and making data available to the public in a more useful and interactive way. The first area will be neighborhood services, including code enforcement, with the goal of making the same process work for other city departments.
Sioux Falls is the first city in South Dakota to be selected for the national effort, bankrolled by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Other cities in the new group are Arlington, Texas, Charleston, South Carolina, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Memphis, Tennessee. In all, 85 cities are part of What Works Cities.
“Over the past seven years, we have worked hard to make Sioux Falls City government more productive and efficient, and this partnership will take us to even greater heights. We are proud to be selected as part of this initiative,” says Mayor Mike Huether.