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A funny thing happened when Edmonton started sharing its transit, land use and population data with members of the public.

Its own staff noticed, and found data they could use, too.

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“It’s like data was siloed,” said Stephane Contre, who supervises a new team of five data scientists and analysts now focused on helping city staff benefit from this new resource.

He can rattle off a list of ways this is already helping. People from across the municipal corporation are coming together, saving money on everything from driving time for turf maintenance to cracking down on emerging security concerns.

“It’s amazing how much data we have that can be used across departments,” he said. “If we’re open by default, we can share with peers internally.”

Edmonton’s data team presented its progress to executive committee Tuesday.

Branch manager Wendy Gnenz said the analysts partnered with Edmonton’s turf maintenance division. They looked at every job they have to do, ran those locations through a computer analytics software, and came up with new routing that could shave off up to 25 per cent of their travel time.