The City of San Diego has launched a redesigned Open Data Portal website that gives residents easier access to information about City services, infrastructure, public safety, spending and more.

The portal includes more than 100 datasets on a variety of topics, including reports to the City’s Get It Done app, street repair projects, transit routes and stop locations, licenses for short-term rental occupancy, locations of artwork in the Civic Art Collection, traffic collisions, drinking water monitoring, hate crime reports, special events permits and much, much more.

“The expanded portal empowers San Diegans by placing more City data and information at their fingertips, increasing transparency, access, accountability and customer service,” said San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava. “As an open data advocate since 2014, today's announcement is another important milestone. These are the cornerstones of good governance and further demonstrate our commitment to engaging with residents and upholding public trust.”

The Open Data Portal was first launched 10 years ago by the City’s Performance and Analytics Department. The recent updates to the site make it easier to navigate and more accessible, and include more critical information important to San Diegans than ever before.

Building this data portal in-house has saved the City an estimated $3 to $4 million over the past 10 years which would have otherwise been paid to outside contractors for the same work. The data portal gives residents, customers and stakeholders immediate access to City data, eliminating the need for special data requests which reduces delays for customers and costs to the City.

“The purpose of the portal is to make City operations more transparent and accountable to the public,” said Andrell Bower, the City’s Chief Data Officer with Performance and Analytics. “It promotes civic engagement and allows for more effective communication with our communities.”

Making open data freely available also helps with economic development. For example, someone planning to launch a business could use the data to find out things like permitting rules, zoning and transit stop locations.

In addition to a modernized design, the update website makes it easier for users to find information. For best results, be sure to clear your web browser history if you’ve used the Open Data Portal before, to ensure the latest version is displayed.

Previously, users had three ways to discover data: by search, by department or by a high-level category. Now, users can access collections of data using plain, everyday language. For example, “Crimes” is a collection of two datasets – crimes reported to the FBI and hate crimes that San Diego Police document separately. Previously, one would have to peruse the whole "Public Safety" category with 30 data sets to find the same information.

There is also a new help section that offers articles, tutorials and premade dashboards. An article might provide information on a complex topic, such as the City’s budget. The tutorials provide step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) on how to answer specific questions using the dataset, such as how many graffiti reports have been made via Get It Done, or how many vehicle stops were made by police last year.

The goal is to empower all San Diego residents, from the most tech-savvy to the least, to be able to freely obtain and use the City’s data as they see fit. To access the portal, visit data.sandiego.gov.