Driven by Data

The Relaunch of Open Data Portal Informing Worcester

My career at City Hall has been driven by data. Directing the collection of it, working to share it with the public, and championing a government that creates policies driven by it.  

In July 2019, I established the Office of Urban Innovation to centralize my push to expand the municipality’s use of data. Some of the first tasks the office undertook were establishing a public records portal and open data portal.  

That open data portal has expanded greatly in the last several years, going from 39 datasets in July 2020 when it was known as Data Informing Government (DIG) Worcester to over 300 today in its current iteration as Informing Worcester.  

The data on the portal includes an open checkbook to see where the municipality spends its money; several sets from the Worcester Police Department, including Use of Force incidents, a Daily Incident Log, and Police Precinct, Sectors, and Street Routes Maps; and Department of Inspectional Services information, including building permits and business certificates.  

The open checkbook lists the payment date, vendor, payment amount, department, and spend categories. Like all the data on Informing Worcester, the checkbook will be filterable and searchable. 

In an effort to get more people to engage with the municipality’s data, I requested the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT), which oversees Informing Worcester, revamp the site. As a result, we relaunched the open data portal on Aug. 1.  

The revamp involved creating training videos for the site, which walk people through how to do things like download, search for, and sort and filter the data available on the site, and adding a new Frequently Asked Questions page that answers common questions about the portal.  

Other updates to the site included placing additional data tickers on the homepage highlighting data points, including the number of building permits the Department of Public Works & Parks has issued and the number of incidents the Worcester Fire Department has responded to in 2024, and adding new ways to display data like StoryMaps. The graphic organizers weave together maps, legends, text, photos, and video to help people understand what the data really means or simply relay the information in an interactive way.  

Informing Worcester has been hosted on an ArcGIS Hub platform for over two years, which allows users to interact with the StoryMaps, documents, tables, geographic data maps, and applications on the site using a method of their choice, including geographic information system (GIS) tools and software. 

Currently the portal features four StoryMaps in the section Data Stories: 

• A History of Worcester in 10 Maps brings together a collection of maps from 1677 to present day, providing a chronological tour of Worcester’s history. Supplemented with photos, aerial imagery, and text, it illustrates Worcester’s rich cultural heritage and history and how it has changed over its 300+ years of existence. 

• Artwork on Main Street Reflects Worcester’s Past provides a virtual tour of the artwork on Main Street, combining maps, photos, and text to explain the history behind the public artwork that lines the street.  

• Worcester’s Green Infrastructure explains the different projects around the city to capture and infiltrate storm water where it lands, including a map of where to find the locations, photos, and links to write-ups about the projects.  

• Climate Resilience in Worcester is one of the most detailed Story Maps on the site. It includes an interactive heat map detailing the average daily summer temperature in different parts of the city, an interactive map of historical and projected flood events, and a breakdown of what the municipality is doing to make the city more climate resilient. The breakdown includes access to the City’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Plan, a link to the Green Infrastructure Story Map, and an explanation of the efforts the City made to plant two Miyawaki Forests and our future plans for CoolPockets – that section includes a map showing where the forests are, an episode of The Buzz on the forests, and photos of what the sites are intended to look like.  The StoryMap ends with a Crowdsource Map where the public can share locations they think would make a good spot for resilient infrastructure. 

Having the Climate Resilience StoryMap not only allows the public to learn about what the data behind things like heat maps means, but also to engage with the city by sharing their own opinions with us on what they would like to see going forward. 

My hope is that Informing Worcester will only continue to grow to include more StoryMaps, datasets, and documents and in its accessibility to the public, helping my administration expand its transparency.  

I want the portal to act as a hub for all information coming out of City Hall, whether you want to read an executive order or see if there are any existing building permits on a house you plan to buy, Informing Worcester will be where you go to find it.