We launched an open data portal, and we’ve got a new website called Citizen Connect that allows the regular layperson to look at a map and understand better without being a heavy data person. We’ve tried to layer our 311 requests with police incident information and building permits, and we’re also adding housing information, working to get our unsafe and vacant structure list up. It’s an easy way for people to see what’s going on around their house, around their kid’s school, and also for us to see areas the city needs to refocus resources on, to use data to push policy decisions.
My old position was heavily involved with information security and teaching end users why that’s important. Now, I’m on the other side. I think about how to release info to the public and how to bust down data silos between departments so they get a more complete vision. Our police chief has been a real champion of this work, which is kind of unique for cities. He knows he has one piece of the puzzle, but crime information without code enforcement or public works or community programs — he knows those are partners and he needs their pieces of the puzzle to say, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of commonality with problem areas, so let’s band resources together and turn those areas around.”
It has been a long journey. I will not tell you all 13 departments are on board and completely understand, but another big champion we’ve had is our city manager. He led the charge and said, “Let’s see if we can have access to these resources because it’s a better way of doing business.” He wanted to have deeper, richer conversations with his department directors about putting data puzzle pieces together. A lot of it has been internal education, showing other departments, look, here’s what housing is doing with this. It’s been little successes within departments as they’ve come on board, and it’s been finding key people in departments already hungry to have the technology piece, which is the piece they were missing. They knew they had the information, they just didn’t have a platform to do something with it.
The city manager has stated that in 2018 he wants to have a public meeting focused around quality-of-life issues, including everything from public safety to parks to community programs, like a one-stop shop for citizens of Little Rock. Instead of running to a budget meeting, a planning meeting, a quarterly crime meeting, you can come to one meeting and have all these entities there with data leading the discussion, saying, here’s what we’re seeing, what potential trends are and why we need to refocus resources based on what we’re seeing, but have that be a citizen-focused conversation around data.