NYC's redesigned data portal gets over 3 million visits so far this year

The redesigned NYC Open Data Portal is getting 50,000 new users a month and has received over 3 million visits so far this year, according to the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

The department on Friday released the annual update to the NYC Open Data Plan, a schedule of data that city agencies plan to release through 2018.

Over the past year, agencies have released hundreds of type of data, from the number of trees planted to the Fire Department's incident dispatch numbers.

This annual update is part of Open Data for All, a strategic overhaul around how the city collects data and reports it to the public. Its focus is on helping New Yorkers view and understand information that affects their lives.

“Transparency is vital for a healthy government and flourishing democracy. That’s why Open Data for All is delivering more data, in more ways, to more New Yorkers than ever before,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press release.

As required by law, each city agency must identify and publish all of its digital public data by 2018. And every year on July 15, the plan provides an update of the city’s progress.

In the past year, over 165 new sets of data have been added in the past year, including:

• City Council Participatory Budgeting Data: contains details on all Participatory Budgeting Project projects from 2012 to the present. Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Council members choose to join Participatory Budgeting New York City, giving at least $1 million from their budget for the whole community to participate in decision-making. Through a public vote, residents then decide which proposals to fund.
  
• Program and benefits API: This data provides benefit, program, and resource information for over 40 health and human services available to NYC residents, and is used on ACCESS NYC and Growing Up NYC. The data is kept up-to-date, including the most recent applications, eligibility requirements, and application dates.
  
• Department of City Planning Facilities Database: The city planning Facilities Database and the NYC Facilities Explorer interactive map, aggregates more than 35,000 records from 50 different public data sources, capturing both publicly and privately operated facilities ranging from health and social services, recreation, education, to solid waste management.
  
• New York Police Department: complaint data, specifically information on felony, misdemeanor, and violation crimes reported to the NYPD from 2006 through 2016.
  

Additionally, 38 new sets of data are now automatically updated, including the Department of Environmental Protection's harbor water quality sampling information and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications' building footprints and street centerline maps.

“Open Data is more than a collection of ones and zeros, it’s truly a portrait of how New York City runs,” said Anne Roest, commissioner of the city's department of information. “We’ve focused on making sure that more New Yorkers are empowered to access this data and subsequently use it to lift up their communities. We’re proud that this year’s report tells those stories alongside the numbers.”