Tech Talk Blog Seattle Information Technology

Tech Talk

Seattle Information Technology

Seattle IT moves to the cloud

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An article on cloud storage in GovTech Today features Seattle IT Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller.

The article predicts that even though cloud growth will crest soon, state, county and local agencies are likely to continue their migrations from private to public cloud. State and local governments are seeking the most cost-effective ways to deliver enhanced services to their customers. Security is another key factor. Public cloud providers are increasingly meeting federal standards and boosting internal safeguards, attracting more attention from public sector agencies.

In Seattle, the article says, Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller said the City has maintained applications including its Microsoft Office 365 email system in the cloud for several years and works with other cloud vendors including Amazon Web Services. But he questioned whether cloud will soon become an all-or-nothing proposition for government.

“We opportunistically leverage cloud where it makes sense. Broadly, in the City we see ourselves having a data center that we maintain and control for at least the next five to 10 years,” Mattmiller said, noting that there’s simply not a path to cloud for all of the roughly 1,200 applications the city maintains.

Having three cloud delivery models, Mattmiller said SaaS seems to offer the most opportunity because of the speed at which solutions and access can be deployed. Having moved Seattle’s email system to the cloud, Mattmiller suggested that telecommunications services might be the next candidate for cloud migration.

The article is in the June print version of GovTech Today. Read the full article online here.

A new look for our Open Data portal | data.seattle.gov

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In our 2017 Open Data Plan, we identified five main priorities for the work we wished to accomplish this year. Priority number three is to “Increase the discoverability of our Open Data to the public”, and we are excited to announce the availability of a key deliverable that addresses that priority.

Today, we are updating our Open Data portal, http://data.seattle.gov, with a new design that will make it easier for our residents to interact with the many high value open datasets that our City Departments provide via our Open Data program.

One of the key drivers of this change was the fact that around 25% of the people accessing our open data portal did so from mobile devices, and our old design was not optimized for mobile experiences. Additionally, we have received ongoing feedback from our residents that the old site was hard to navigate, and hard for people to find what they were looking for. We are confident that this new design will greatly improve both of those experiences.

New Design:

Old Design:

 

 

While this site update is a very visible sign of our progress, it is important to note that we have more work that we will be doing throughout 2017 to improve our open data discoverability even further. Today, we silo data by City Departments – in the coming months we plan to change this to align to the 19 services that the City currently describes on http://seattle.gov and point people to open data related to those services instead. We feel this is a better approach, both to point our residents to open data in ways they are already familiar with, and it helps our City Departments think about how future open dataset releases can be aligned towards Services and involve multi-departmental partnerships.

Additionally, we are working on projects that will help improve our usage of metadata, both within new datasets we will publish as well as updating existing datasets on our platform. By improving the contextual information we supply with our open datasets, we will make it easier for our residents to find the data they are looking for – either directly on our portal or via search engines such as Google. We will share more details on those projects later in 2017.

 

City of Seattle’s Open Data Program releases its 2016 Annual Report and 2017 Open Data Plan

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Today the Seattle Open Data Program has published its 2016 Annual Report as well as its 2017 Open Data Plan. As this is the first time the City has released either of these publications, it marks an important step forward in the maturation of our Open Data Program.

The Open Data Program makes the data generated by the City of Seattle openly available to the public for the purpose of increasing the quality of life for our residents; increasing transparency, accountability and comparability; promoting economic development and research; and improving internal performance management.

Seattle is home to an engaged, innovative public that wants to make the city a better place to live. As a City, we strive to make our data open to the public, enabling those outside of government to find solutions to our most pressing civic challenges.

The 2016 Annual Report highlights the significant progress made in embedding the Open Data Program within the City of Seattle since the signing of the Mayor’s “Open by Preference” Executive Order (2016-01). Currently 33 City departments have designated an Open Data Champion who is responsible for facilitating the release of datasets deemed valuable to the community. In 2016, the Program published 146 new datasets — far exceeding the program’s initial goal of 50 new datasets.

The 2017 Open Data Plan identifies the key priorities that will build on that success, increasing the data made publicly available to encourage development of innovative solutions that improve our quality of life, while also increasing the ability of City departments to use those data to make informed decisions. The priorities outlined in Seattle’s 2017 Open Data Plan align closely with Mayor Murray’s vision to make 2017 the year of good governance.

Both the 2016 Annual Report and 2017 Open Data Plan can be found via http://seattle.gov/opendata.

Recently published Open Datasets on data.seattle.gov

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Since the beginning of 2017 we have had several noteworthy open dataset releases happen, such as the Seattle Police Department Use of Force datasets and more recently a very large dataset from the Seattle Public Library containing Check Out data from 2005 to the present day. In addition to those datasets, we have recently released another eleven datasets that also provide valuable information and interesting insights to the public. Below is the list of those datasets, along with short descriptions and pointers to the datasets on http://data.seattle.gov. Sincere thanks to everyone involved at the City of Seattle in helping make these datasets available to our residents!

If you have any feedback on these or other datasets we have published, please contact us at open.data@seattle.gov or @seattleopendata.

 

Underground Storage Tank (UST) Records – Residential

Records of SFD permits related to decommissioning of a residential heating oil tank. These records are required by businesses and home owners for a common type of real estate transaction. These are some of the most frequently requested records that SFD produces under public disclosure laws.

https://data.seattle.gov/Public-Safety/Underground-Storage-Tank-UST-Records-Residential/hayt-fugt/

 

Seattle Center Emergency Services Unit 2016 Incident Report

This dataset provides summary tallies by day for the different types of incidents the Seattle Center Emergency Services unit responds to.

https://data.seattle.gov/City-Business/Seattle-Center-Emergency-Services-Unit-2016-Incide/wgrr-kk3q

 

Seattle Center Utility Use Details 2013 – 2015

This dataset provides total monthly utility consumption off all non-tenant occupied facilities at Seattle Center. This includes Key Arena, McCaw Hall, Armory, Campus Grounds, Garages, and other small facilities.

https://data.seattle.gov/City-Business/Seattle-Center-Utility-Use-Details-2013-2105/2aqe-rae6

 

Seattle Pet Licenses

A list of active/current Seattle pet licenses, including animal type (species), pet’s name, breed and the owner’s ZIP code.

https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Seattle-Pet-Licenses/jguv-t9rb

 

Meals Programs in Seattle

This data set provides the names, locations, and service days of meal programs that serve free meals to low-income and homeless people in Seattle. It also provides the kinds of meals served.

https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Meals-Programs-in-Seattle/hmzu-x5ed/

 

Special Event Permits

Applications received and Special Event permits issued by Special Events Office, Office of Economic Development, since 2014.

https://data.seattle.gov/Permitting/Special-Events-Permits/dm95-f8w5

 

Performance Ranges By Building Type 2015

Summary energy and building characteristics by building type for non-residential and multifamily buildings 20,000 square feet or greater that benchmark energy data with the City of Seattle.

https://data.seattle.gov/dataset/Performance-Ranges-By-Building-Type-2015/pqdh-4i9k

 

Unreinforced Masonry Buildings

A list of known unreinforced masonry buildings in the Seattle city limits.

https://data.seattle.gov/Permitting/Unreinforced-Masonry-Buildings/54qs-2h7f

 

Idea Collection for Youth Voice, Youth Choice Participatory Budgeting

List of ideas collected from community members on youth-based projects they would like the City to fund from the Participatory Budgeting fund of $700,000.

https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Idea-Collection-for-Youth-Voice-Youth-Choice-Parti/hyeg-3jh7

 

City of Seattle official Twitter accounts statistics

This dataset contains statistics on the usage patterns of the official City of Seattle Twitter accounts, as well their outreach impact.

https://data.seattle.gov/City-Business/COS-Statistics-Twitter/m7pa-jz6b

 

City of Seattle official blogs statistics

This dataset contains statistics on the usage patterns of the official City of Seattle blogs.

https://data.seattle.gov/City-Business/COS-Statistics-Blogs/njt7-eq96