Pennsylvania’s New Open Data Website Is Now Live

The Rotunda of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg.

The Rotunda of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. Shutterstock

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Bill Lucia By Bill Lucia,
Executive Editor
 

Connecting state and local government leaders

By Bill Lucia

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A dozen datasets, including those related to government performance, schools and jobs, are currently available through the online portal.

The state of Pennsylvania launched a new open data website Monday, offering a dozen government datasets to the public.

Data currently available through OpenDataPA are tied to three areas Gov. Tom Wolf has identified as top priorities for his administration. Going forward, a broader range of state datasets will be added to the website, the governor’s office said Monday in an announcement.

Wolf’s administration has dubbed the three priority areas the current data cover “Schools That Teach,” “Jobs That Pay,” and “Government That Works.”

Among the data now posted on the website: performance profile information for public schools; monthly counts of people the state’s Department of Corrections has in custody; and the number of workforce trainings the Department of Community and Economic Development has been involved in offering.

(Commonwealth of Pennsylvania / OpenDataPA)

Wolf, a Democrat, signed an executive order in April directing the governor’s Office of Administration to take steps meant to make more state agency data publicly available.

“One of our most valuable and underutilized resources in state government is data,” Wolf said Monday in a statement.

Open data initiatives are already well underway at other levels of government in Pennsylvania.

An online portal the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center launched last year harbors local government data from the city of Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County, along with datasets from other organizations in the region. It now has about 130 datasets available.

Philadelphia’s open data portal currently features around 340 datasets, covering topics such as land zoning, food and the city’s finances.

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