City of Austin’s data culture still under construction

Most open government initiatives across the United States focus on transparency, where local governments publish information online about its operations. By giving people access to the data used to run government operations, others can use that data to solve city problems or create additional services, like the congressional tracking website GovTrack. This project is an attempt to understand the issues surrounding the City of Austin’s initiative to open up its data. The city joined the open data movement with the selection and launch of their Socrata portal in 2011. But the local government didn’t just come up with the idea of launching an open data portal by itself. Austin’s open government data movement has been largely led by grassroots efforts.