NYC's Open Data Rollout Collides With Reluctant Departments

The NYPD's failure to produce usable traffic crash data, or agree to change their data gathering and reporting procedures, is just one example of the obstacles confronting implementation of the city's landmark open data law.

October 13, 2013, 7am PDT | Jonathan Nettler | @nettsj

"On Thursday, the [New York City Council's] Transportation Committee was discussing Intro 1163, a bill requiring the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT) to maintain an interactive traffic crash map," writes Kate Hinds. "This is data that street safety advocates, community board members, and some city council members have been pushing for for years, because it allows people to visualize data."

"But the NYPD, represented at the hearing by assistant commissioner of intergovernmental affairs Susan Petito, is opposed to the bill." According to Hinds, the reasons given for the opposition were many, but they essentially boiled down to one: "a philosophical objection by the Police Department to posting this sort of...crash data on a site".

NYPD isn't the only city department flouting the new law. The Departments of Transportation and Education were singled out by Code for America's Noel Hidalgo as particularly uncooperative in public testimony.

Full Story:

The NYPD's Crash Data Is Bad and There's Not Enough of It

Published on Thursday, October 10, 2013 in WNYC: Transportation Nation