July 2020 Perspective EXPERT INSIGHTS ON A TIMELY POLICY ISSUE JARED MONDSCHEIN, SHANNON PRIER, AARON CLARK-GINSBERG, EDWARD PARKER How Smart Cities Could Improve Open Data Portals to Empower Local Residents and Businesses A Case Study of the City of Los Angeles and COVID-19 he global trend toward urbanization, combined with innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), has resulted in movements toward revolutionizing local governments through digital Ttransformations of communities to become “smart cities” (Silva et al., 2018). These smart cities typically seek to connect the physical infrastructure of the city to a broader virtual infrastructure that enables the collection, integration, analysis, and utility of detailed operational data to improve local decisionmaking (Harrison et al., 2010). Smart city initiatives have involved a wide array of projects, includ- ing those focused on mobility, water management, and electricity delivery (Appio, Lima, and Paroutis, 2019). As these developments progress, both urban planners and city leaders have sought to facilitate the inclusion of local community members (Albino, Berardi, and Dangelico, 2015). By providing local citizens with access to public information, C O R P O R A T I O N the breadth of which is rapidly expanding because of in individual siloes of information (Zuiderwijk, Janssen, and increased deployment of ICTs, city leaders can promote Davis, 2014). Numerous cities, including at least 85 cities democracy and increase the participation, interaction, within the United States (Brown, 2017), have deployed open self -empowerment, and social inclusion of residents data portals to enable citizen-based innovation and improve (Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014). Indeed, citizens and stake- transparency in the decisionmaking and implementation holders can contribute to a city’s development in several processes (Kumar et al., 2020). Despite the initial promise of ways, including by working with local leaders to iden- open data portals for facilitating citizen access to informa- tify problems; community-specific attributes; the spatial tion, reports have found that use cases are limited. Reports context; planning goals, objectives, and targets; planning also have identified numerous contextual, technological, and outcomes; and policy options (Stratigea, Papadopoulou, organizational challenges that limit the utility of these open and Panagiotopoulou, 2015). data portals (Falco and Kleinhans, 2018). In the context of smart cities, the objective of inclusion In this Perspective, we use the city of Los has been operationalized through open data portals, which Angeles’s (LA’s) open data portal to access and ana- serve as publicly accessible repositories for smart city data lyze data to develop generalizable strategies that city that aggregate data streams that were historically isolated leaders—particularly those responsible for managing the local open data portal (e.g., the chief digital officer, chief information officer, or director of the office of perfor- mance management)—could adopt to improve the utility of their local open data portals. Specifically, we sought Despite the initial promise to develop an understanding of how city services and residents were affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 of open data portals for (COVID-19) pandemic. Although this unprecedented public health emergency might represent an edge case, facilitating citizen access emerging research has demonstrated that the disclosure of timely and accurate information can promote bottom- to information, there are up, collaborative problem-solving (Chen et al., 2020) and adherence to national and local COVID-19 crisis man- numerous contextual, agement policies (Shaw, Kim, and Hua, 2020; Van Bavel technological, and et al., 2020). Indeed, strong and effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as physical distancing organizational challenges (also known as social distancing), quarantine measures, hand-washing, and mask-wearing, all require wide- that limit their utility. spread (and often voluntary) community participation 2 (Anderson et al., 2020; Cheng et al., 2020). Although LA city’s residents and workers have been heavily affected by government sources regularly release data for public con- COVID-19, with 40,000 cases and 2,000 deaths reported sumption via press releases and news conferences,1 the LA as of May 19, 2020 (County of Los Angeles Department of open data portal could, in theory, provide a higher level of Public Health, undated). Furthermore, state and local gov- access through routine updates of data sets. ernments have issued numerous orders affecting daily life, In principle, smart city data should be useful for in addition to the orders and guidance issued at the federal understanding local emergencies, particularly compared and international levels (see Figure 1). with traditional means of data collection (Alazawi et al., 2014; Sakhardande, Hanagal, and Kulkarni, 2016). First, smart city data are collected frequently and consistently, Results meaning that they can address some of the expenses and The LA open data portal is an online, searchable database quality issues that are commonly associated with collect- used by the city to share data from its agencies with the ing near–real time data. Second, the data sets are broad public, researchers, and other interested parties (Office of in scope, so they can be used to understand the impacts the Mayor of Los Angeles, undated a). Visitors to the web- of health outbreaks from a variety of perspectives and page can search for specific data sets to view from the more groups. Enabling citizen access to these data and under- than 1,500 available, browse data by topic, explore exam- standing of their implications promotes transparency ples of how select data sets could be used, and even create about the effects of local decisionmaking and could enable data visualizations. The homepage also provides a series the development of bottom-up solutions to rapidly emerg- of videos intended to help users access the data sets along ing challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic with links to its application programming interface (API). (Chari et al., 2017). This aligns with the extensive body Each data set includes a summary that briefly describes of research showing the efficacy of community-based the data set, the source agency, date of last update, update approaches to disaster management and response that frequency, and relevant attachments. Data sets can be are increasingly articulated in policy doctrine, such as downloaded for offline use in CSV, RDF, RSS, TSV, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) XML formats. “whole-of-community approach” to emergency manage- Data sets were selected for download and analysis in ment (FEMA, 2011; Maskrey, 2011; Wisner et al., 2004). April 2020, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pan- LA is an ideal case study for an assessment of an open demic in the United States. We first filtered the data sets data portal, particularly during the ongoing COVID-19 by date of last update, removing data sets that had not been pandemic. LA’s portal has been highly ranked by the updated since mid-March, when the United States declared U.S. City Open Data Census and the World Council on a national emergency and a flurry of local government City Data (Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles, 2015), and actions were taken. Data sets that were selected using this it contains more than 1,500 data sets. In addition, the standard but that contained metadata indicating otherwise 3 FIGURE 1 Timeline of Major Events and Actions Related to the COVID-19 Outbreak in Los Angeles, January to April 2020 California announces The mayor of West soft losue of Hollywood tests state parks positive for COVID-19 LA County shuts The U.S. State down Parks and Department Recreation trails issues a global United States because of First known California calls Do ot ael deploys the overcrowding death from for bars and advisory naval hospital COVID-19 in night clubs to ship Mercy LA begins WHO LA County close and California to LA testing high- declares restaurants to issues risk residents LA confirms coronavirus California reduce capacity statewide California for COVID-19 the first person to be an First known urges avoiding United States Almost all shelter-in- reopens closed experiencing international U.S. citizen gatherings of declares a LA orders California place order St. Vincent LA schools California homelessness public health dies of more than 250 national bars and courts have with legal Medical Center extend closure closes all infected with emergency COVID-19 people emergency gyms closed closed penalties hospital in LA to May 1st DMV offices COVID-19 1/25 1/30 1/312/28 3/4 3/11 3/12 3/13 3/143/15 3/16 3/17 3/18 3/19 3/20 3/21 3/22 3/23 3/26 3/27 3/30 4/1 4/7 First case of United States First known Disneyland, LAX Catholic California California United States California LA orders Mayor Eric COVID-19 in restricts travel Californian California announces Archdiocese closes all deploys the approves a orders a all faes Garcetti California in from China dies of Adventure, and that it will of LA suspends campgrounds National declaration of moratorium markets orders Orange County COVID-19 Disney World screen mass in state parks Guard to major disaster on most closed masks and near announce Americans distribute in California evictions face Sacramento closures returning from California food at food coverings at restricted orders