NYC clarifies open data policies

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently signed a handful of bills to help the administration meet its goal of making its open data portal's store of information more accessible.

The first bill, according to Politico, allows the city’s Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT) to preserve row data that is subject to permanent removal or replacement and to create standards about when and how to split up big, bulky data sets as archival and technical.

The second measure requires the creation of a plain language data dictionary to go along with each dataset so that individuals can understand the data being presented.

The third bill requires city agencies respond to open data requests within a two month window.

If a dataset is updated, the fourth bill requires that update to carry through to both the open data portal and any other publicly available copy of the data.

The last bill creates a working group to set up a standard presentation for displaying address information throughout all data sets.

"I have to tell you that these bills are really not sexy bills, and they're really not controversial bills,” said Councilman James Vacca, sponsor of one of the bills and chair of the Council's Committee on Technology. “However, they make government tick."