City of Kingston increases data sharing and transparency with Opendatasoft data portal

Canadian city extends partnership to strengthen openness, boost efficiency, and underpin data culture

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES, August 28, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Opendatasoft, the leading Data Portal solution provider, announced today that the City of Kingston in Ontario, Canada has renewed its contract to use its solution to power its open data portal and internal data sharing programs.

Kingston is committed to fostering open government by encouraging participation and demonstrating transparency and accountability. Sharing data is central to this objective, and it first launched its Opendatasoft-based Open Data Kingston portal in 2018, initially focused on sharing spatial/GIS data, such as engineering and planning information, with developers and utilities.

Accelerated by the City’s commitment to ensure its data is open by default, the portal has now grown to cover a wide range of information from other areas, such as financial disclosures made by Councilors and progress on capital projects. Information is available internally and externally and visualizations include a range of user-friendly dashboards, such as one for Kingston Fire & Rescue, showing key performance metrics, and another around citizen service (311) requests.

The City’s latest project is the MyKingston web app. Designed to make interacting with City services easier and more seamless, it provides a one-stop shop for citizens to access services, providing them with a personalized view of their city, based on their address. All of this data flows automatically from the Open Data Kingston portal, delivering information, such as parking zones, local amenities, and the electoral district through a single, tailored view.

While the City began with a focus on sharing data externally, extending its portal has supported the growth of an internal data culture, with data and dashboards shared within the organization through Opendatasoft’s multiple workspaces. Future plans include increasing the number of dashboard visualizations and adding new datasets to support key city priorities, such as around homelessness. Currently, the open data portal has 84 datasets and gets over 182,000 monthly API calls from 3,000 users.

“Within the City of Kingston everyone understands that the data we handle belongs to our citizens, and it is our responsibility to share it as seamlessly and openly as possible to demonstrate transparency and accountability,” said Jess Rogers, Data Architect, City of Kingston. “Working with Opendatasoft is central to achieving our aims, making data sharing seamless and helping us to use data to support our wider priorities, both internally and externally.”

Home to over 120,000 people, the City of Kingston in Canada has a clear vision to provide its residents and businesses with a smart, livable, modern city, built on access to world-class education and research institutions, advanced healthcare facilities, affordable living and vibrant entertainment and tourism activities.

“The City of Kingston’s success demonstrates how data portals deliver far-reaching benefits,” said Franck Carassus, Chief Sales Officer, and co-founder of Opendatasoft. “Its program has grown over time to move beyond sharing open data externally to cover a wide range of use cases and most importantly to underpin greater internal sharing, building a data-centric organization that is delivering on the needs of its citizens and businesses.”

The City of Kingston’s open data portal can be found at https://opendatakingston.cityofkingston.ca/pages/welcome/

To read a full case study on Kingston’s work, visit
https://www.opendatasoft.com/en/resources/city-of-kingston-builds-transparent-data-culture-through-portals/

About Opendatasoft
Opendatasoft is the leader of data democratization. It provides a SaaS Data Portal solution allowing seamless self-service access to all of an organization's data assets. Opendatasoft empowers organizations to scale personalized data experiences in record time and it is the essential data management solution to decrease costs and improve efficiency, increase and build new revenue streams, mitigate risks and manage crises. Opendatasoft enables data centricity, informing better decision-making at all levels and helping organizations to use data to fundamentally transform how they function and operate.

Opendatasoft serves 400 customers in 25 countries, powering more than 3,000 data portals. Based on this experience, we’ve developed a unique expertise in data management, which we use to provide our customers with premium services to help them deliver use cases that meet their specific needs.

Public and private organizations from all sectors democratize data in their ecosystem by making it usable at scale through internal or external data portals powered by Opendatasoft. They include large companies such as Schneider Electric, UK Power Networks, Veolia and Saint Gobain, governments and state departments, and major cities such as Paris, Vancouver, Long Beach, Leicester, Namur and Eindhoven. Find out more at www.opendatasoft.com

C Measures
Measures Consulting
chris@measuresconsulting.com
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