Cleveland City Hall Debuts Open Data Portal in Bid to Boost Government Transparency

Liz Crowe, director of Quality Control at the city’s Department of Urban Analytics & Innovation, debuted the city’s new Open Data Portal on Tuesday, at the Department of Public Health. Credit: Mark Oprea

Last year, according to City Hall, the five full-time staff members in its public records department received roughly 33,000 requests—for police body cam footage, for homicide counts, for building permits from the Department of Building & Housing.

During the same time, Washington D.C., a city with three times Cleveland’s population, received just 11,000.

“And they’re barely keeping up with those 33,000,” Liz Crowe, director of Quality Control at the city’s Department of Urban Analytics & Innovation, said.

Crowe joined Mayor Justin Bibb on Tuesday to unveil City Hall’s fix for the typhoon of requests burdening its records department: Cleveland’s first Open Data Portal, a massive digitized collection of, as Crowe said, “overtime, trend-type, map-type” data and information that, in the past, required a necessary ask to a public records official.

That data, which includes everything from traffic studies to property surveys to status reports on Cleveland’s water quality (we’re okay in April), is also, both Crowe and Bibb added, a method of allowing skeptics and truth-seekiers ready access to info that previously was behind a curtain.

“By proactively releasing information, by having you all not need to come to us with questions, we can eliminate the need for you all to say, ‘Hey, do you have this data? Where is it?'” Crowe told press from a podium at the Department of Public Health. “And we can proactively tell you what we are doing as a city so we can increase transparency. We can increase the trust.”

Bibb, who was quick to remind his audience that he was once a Smart Cities expert in Washington, D.C., sold City Hall’s portal as evidence that Cleveland is making steps in its search for its own modernization. (Like, the mayor pointed out, 84 other U.S. cities have open data portals. Some, like D.C.’s, have been around since the mid-2000s.)

“This is another symbol and sign of progress towards a more modern and responsive City Hall,” Bibb said. He framed the portal as a giant online command center: “As former Mayor Bloomberg once said, ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure.'”

Mayor Bibb framed the portal as evidence of Cleveland’s growth into modernization. Credit: City of Cleveland

The portal itself, which went live Tuesday afternoon, is as clear and responsive as it might be difficult to decipher. Some maps and stories, whether it be ward-by-ward Census data or Cleveland Police’s crime map, are easy enough for the generalist to digest; while others, like its 15 Minute City Index, might require a planner’s insight. (Or a ArcGIS account, like a map detailing city planning goals.)

There are legible maps citing Cleveland’s 10 speed table pilot locations, just as there are details tracking its burgeoning 311 system (showing 124 complaints about trash receptacles in the past week), or a universal map detailing Bibb’s 15 Minute City ideas. (And reminding us that there’s no movie theater downtown, or functioning tennis courts.)

One still, however, has to use the traditional public records request portal, and bear its usual wait times, for anything audio and video—bodycam footage, 911 calls.

Assistant Law Director Amy Hough told Scene public safety data is one of the most requested areas of information. But it all adds up to volume.

“Ten percent last year were from media,” she said. She smiled. “Thirty percent of those were from [Fox 8 investigative reporter] Ed Gallek.”

In the future, the city plans to add a slew of new datasets and maps, including a 311 system that imitates the transparency of Amazon’s delivery tracker and a tool to look up city cemetery plots by name.

“Data,” Bibb said, “that belongs to the residents of Cleveland.”

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