The city of Reno wants to make its data more accessible, be it building permits or violent crime stats. Reno Public Radio's Julia Ritchey has more the city's new digital transparency platform.
City manager Andrew Clinger debuted their new data portal, called Open Reno, at last weekend's Hackathon, a day-long conference on technology and government.
The site replaces an older version and makes it easier to search for information.
"On the website, we have some performance data out there information related to response times for our fire department; we have information on there on the budget; we have information out there on how much debt the city has," he says.
Additionally, the site allows regular citizens to access the city's raw data sets. Clinger hopes this will spur programmers to create apps that might be helpful to the city and the public.
"It's an opportunity for us to collaborate with the public to say, 'Here's our data, let's see what you can do with it,'” says Clinger. “It becomes a resource for us and the community, really."
Open Reno was created by Seattle-based software firm Socrata, a company they contract with annually for a little less than $100,000.
The city will continue adding to Open Reno and is asking citizens to submit feedback through the site at reno.gov/openreno.
