Overview

Our mission: open data for all

Open Data is an opportunity to engage New Yorkers in the information that is produced and used by City government. We believe that every New Yorker can benefit from Open Data, and Open Data can benefit from every New Yorker.

Who we are

NYC Open Data is managed by the Open Data Team at the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI). The team works with City agencies to identify and make data available, coordinate platform operations and improvements, and promote the use of Open Data both within government and throughout NYC. Each City agency also has an Open Data Coordinator, who serves as the main point of contact for the Open Data team and the public, and works to identify, document, structure, and manage the agency’s public datasets.

We want to especially thank all of our partners in the civic tech community for your ongoing support — we could not do this without you.

Open Data Values

open data values
  1. Start with Users: The first step in opening data is focusing on demand. We support creative analytic thinking to enable users to answer the questions most important to them and also make efforts to spur demand in communities less familiar to Open Data.
  2. Treat the publication of the dataset as its debut: Though a lot of work goes into making a dataset ready to go live, our work isn’t done once that dataset is published. Opening data requires that it is updated, errors are identified, and users are able to engage and provide feedback.
  3. Encourage purposeful and easy engagement: Open Data is a platform that should be used as a tool for feedback. Substantive engagement is more than an obligation: it must be default for Open Data.
  4. Empower agencies: By empowering Open Data Coordinators and champions in every agency and office, we can narrow the gap between agency experts and Open Data users.
  5. Integrate Open Data into citywide processes: As Open Data becomes routine across NYC government, we will look for opportunities to make small changes in existing processes.
  6. Learn, test, standardize – and learn again: We must test our assumptions and try new ideas, collect information on our efforts, and analyze our performance for points of improvement.

Other NYC Open Government projects

people sharing data

Explore other data and open information initiatives going on around the City.

Technical Standards Manual

Data standards are “rules” on how agencies should manage or present their data. The standards in New York City are designed to make Open Data more usable to the maximum number of users. The Technical Standards Manual (TSM) includes data standards and citywide policy, and is periodically revised by the Open Data team to reflect new Open Data requirements for City agencies.

State and Federal Open Data efforts

NYC Open Data contains information that is collected and maintained by the City government. Both New York State and the federal government also maintain data related to New York City that may not appear on NYC Open Data. Users can browse data.ny.gov to download data from New York State on topics from farmers’ markets to MTA turnstile usage. Federal datasets, such as census information and data from the College Scorecard, can be found on data.gov.

Open Data Terms of Use

By accessing datasets and feeds available through NYC Open Data, the user agrees to all of the Terms of Use of NYC.gov as well as the Privacy Policy for NYC.gov. The user also agrees to any additional terms of use defined by the agencies, bureaus, and offices providing data. Public data sets made available on NYC Open Data are provided for informational purposes. The City does not warranty the completeness, accuracy, content, or fitness for any particular purpose or use of any public data set made available on NYC Open Data, nor are any such warranties to be implied or inferred with respect to the public data sets furnished therein.

The City is not liable for any deficiencies in the completeness, accuracy, content, or fitness for any particular purpose or use of any public data set, or application utilizing such data set, provided by any third party.

Submitting City Agencies are the authoritative source of data available on NYC Open Data. These entities are responsible for data quality and retain version control of data sets and feeds accessed on the Site. Data may be updated, corrected, or refreshed at any time.