City of Buffalo, NY Partners With Socrata on New Open Data Portal to Increase Transparency and Access to Data

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Sep 25, 2017) - Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown today announced the City of Buffalo has selected Socrata, the market leader in making government data discoverable and usable for government workers and the people they serve, as the city's Open Data Buffalo data platform provider.

"I'm pleased to announce the City's new partnership with Socrata to unleash the power of the data that the City collects each and every day, while improving services to the residents of Buffalo," said Mayor Byron W. Brown.

"The City's new open data portal will offer a great deal of data that will help us as we continue building a city of opportunity for all. The proactive public release of our data will also increase transparency of how the City of Buffalo functions, while offering residents, government leaders, businesses and researchers easy access to information that will provide opportunities for external analysis and generate new ideas on how to use information for the public good. Creation of the portal will also help us work smarter by increasing internal data sharing, improving workflow and end duplicative data collection, and give our City departments the ability to tell their everyday stories through interactive tables, charts, graphs, and maps."

The City of Buffalo plans to launch the open data site in October. The new site will enable residents, businesses, media, researchers and developers to access datasets around citizen services, policing, parking, and more. Beyond simple downloadable spreadsheets, the site enables visitors to engage with the data, creating visualizations and building applications that automatically update when new data enters the system.

"Our partnership with Socrata will bolster data-driven decision making in City Hall while also giving citizens greater insight into the day-to-day activities of the government," said Kirk McLean, program manager of Open Data Buffalo. "For example, utilizing the Socrata platform, every commissioner will have the ability to quickly map 311 data to show where their department's services are most in demand."

The City of Buffalo partnered with Socrata because it wanted a new program to streamline and more efficiently deliver large amounts of data in a rapid, organized and easy-to-use manner. The City previously relied on PDFs and other formats that were difficult to update and access. Socrata's platform will enable secure, automatic uploading and sharing of the City's data, saving staff hours of time once spent on manual updates.

Plus, data on Socrata's platform is machine-readable via application programming interface (API), making it possible for businesses, researchers and organizations to build applications using the data. Examples of successful businesses using Socrata-hosted, public data are Yelp, Redfin and Porch.

"We are excited to partner with the City of Buffalo to create an intuitive and efficient way for residents and businesses to access open data, regardless of their skill set," said Kevin Merritt, founder and CEO of Socrata. "This transformation is significant because it updates how citizens and the City of Buffalo interact, increasing collaboration for improved quality of life."

The City of Buffalo joins New York City and New York State as Socrata customers and leaders in the open data movement.

About Socrata:

Socrata is the market leader in making existing government data discoverable, usable, and actionable for government workers and the people they serve. Socrata provides a data-as-a-service platform and cloud applications exclusively for city, county, state, and federal government organizations. Socrata delivers unprecedented, data-driven innovation and cost-savings by bringing together disparate systems and leveraging the cloud to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of government programs, to improve quality of life for residents, positively impact local economies, and achieve excellence in government operations. The technology is optimized on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector cloud and delivered using the exclusive Socrata Blueprint Methodology.