One of DoITT’s goals is to facilitate a more transparent and open government to increase civic engagement. Through New York City’s open data policy – a citywide set of standards and guidelines – DoITT is presenting information through raw data and ensuring that New York City government is increasingly accountable and open for future generations.

Beyond presenting information to the public, these data sets serve as a rich resource for developers, civic groups, and anyone else to build applications on their own. The creation of new apps using City data fosters innovation and leverages talents beyond City government for create solutions to tough problems.

The City’s open data policy ensures ongoing access to public 
data according to the following timeline:

• The City must deliver qualifying agency data already publicly available on NYC.gov by March, 2013.
• All agencies must publish compliance plans by September, 2013.
• These plans will be updated each year and will together serve as a roadmap for agencies to post their datasets to a single Web portal by 2018.

Learn More:

• Visit the NYC Open Data wiki to review the policies and technical standards
• Watch an introduction to the City’s open data program
• View photos and discussion topics from the NYC Open Data Policy Hack Day
• Follow NYC Open Data on Tumblr for events and creative data visualizations
  View and download NYC Open Data

Over 750 datasets are available for free, at any time via the NYC Open Data portal on NYC.gov.  Today NYC Open Data represents datasets from nearly 40 City agencies, including public safety data, buildings complaints, restaurant inspections and real-time traffic numbers. This repository is a core component of the City's open data efforts, representing a revolutionary approach to storing and publishing City data in a searchable, sortable and customer-friendly manner.

In the summer of 2009, DoITT and the NYC Economic Development Corporation established the NYC BigApps Competition. This annual competition has made hundreds of raw City data sets publicly available, and challenged local entrepreneurs and developers to create new and unique tools for public use. The program has resulted in dozens of new applications developed by the public, for the public, at essentially no cost to taxpayers.

Open 311 is a national program based in New York City that supports  open standards around data exchange between 311 systems and non-government web and mobile applications. The City of New York is working with Open311 and other cities across the country to develop interoperable systems that will allow citizens to better accessand develop applications using inquiry, service request and other data from 311 systems.

The City of New York released a content-inquiry application programming interface (API) as part of Open311's efforts. The inquiry API supports content for services, facilities and an RSS feed of daily information.

The City of New York is working with large jurisdictions across the country and the Federal Government to aggregate and share data. The sharing of municipal data enables data-driven decision making and analysis in a way never possible before.

Cities.data.gov is a new one-stop destination for searchable, sortable, and downloadable data. The website currently includes datasets from New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and the Federal Government. The unified data portal also provides links to download apps, details on civic challenges, and open data policies. This initiative promotes transparency in government while providing developers and the public with the tools to build innovative applications and platforms for their communities.