Asheville, NC

RESOLUTION NO. 15-189

RESOLUTION DIRECTING THE CITY MANAGER TO ESTABLISH AN OPEN DATA POLICY FOR THE CITY OF ASHEVILLE FOR SUSTAINING PUBLIC DATA AVAILABILITY USING OPEN DATA STANDARDS

WHEREAS, the City of Asheville (City) is committed to using technology to foster open, transparent, and accessible government; and

WHEREAS, the City has been a leader in open data since hosting Open Data Day in October 2012; and

WHEREAS, the Asheville City Council supports the efforts of the City Manager and staff to promote open data; and

WHEREAS, by sharing data freely, the City seeks to develop opportunities for economic development, commerce, entrepreneurship and civic engagement; and

WHEREAS, Open Data, proactively disclosing City data, is a foundational element of Open Government, is consistent with citizens’ right to public information, and promotes civic engagement with the potential benefit of civic development of technology products and infrastructures to improve service delivery through expanded and innovative applications, among other things; and

WHEREAS, publishing structured standardized data in machine readable formats creates new opportunities for information from different sources to be combined and visualized in new and unexpected ways, for niche markets to be identified and developed, and for citizens to browse, interpret and draw attention to trends or issues with greater efficiency; and

WHEREAS, the use of open data exchange standards maximizes transparency, access to public information, and coordination and efficiencies among organizations across the public, nonprofit and private sectors; and

WHEREAS, the City encourages the local software community to develop software applications and tools to collect, organize and share public data in new and innovative ways that benefit both citizens and government; and

WHEREAS, software applications and tools that enable citizens to access, visualize, and analyze public information will support informed public engagement and encourage citizens to provide feedback on local issues;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ASHEVILLE:

That the City Council hereby directs the City Manager to adopt an Open Data Policy in accordance with the following schedule and guidelines:

Section 1. Within one hundred eighty days of the effective date of this resolution, that the City’s Information Technology Services (ITS) Department shall prepare and publish guidelines setting forth the technical standards for the publishing of public data sets in raw or unprocessed form a single web number portal by city departments for the purpose of making public data available to the greatest number of users and for the greatest number of applications.

Section 2. The City’s Communication and Public Engagement Division will solicit feedback on the technical implementation plan within 60 days of its preparation.

Section 3. The Communication and Public Engagement Division will coordinate annual opportunities for community collaboration related to the City’s Open Data program.

Section 4. The City’s ITS Department will work with all city departments to publish an initial open data release plan within twelve months of the passing of this resolution. This plan will serve as a guide for the city to post their datasets to a single online open data catalog.

Section 5. The ITS Department will, whenever practical, work to ensure that new software systems used by the City are designed to facilitate the release of open data as defined by state and federal law;

Section 6. City Departments will follow best practices identified by the City Manager and the ITS Department with regard to open data.

Section 7. The City shall maintain an open data website that will serve as an open data catalog of the data available from the City.

Section 8. The City’s ITS Department shall make every reasonable effort to ensure data are published in machine readable formats using prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media.

Section 9. The City will make all open data available with a license that allows for free re-use to ensure clarity of copyright and to waive legal responsibility for all published data.

Section 10. All public data sets shall be updated on the open data catalog as often as necessary to preserve the integrity and usefulness of the datasets. Whenever feasible, these updates shall be automated.

Section 11. City staff will provide the City Council Governance committee an informational report every six months which evaluates the implementation, successes and barriers, and public uses resulting from the Open Data policy for the first two years after this policy is adopted and once every year thereafter.

Read, approved and adopted this 13th day of October, 2015.