What we do
Our mission is to make data about San Diego freely available for everyone to use.
What is "data about San Diego?"
Data about San Diego is any data that describes San Diego in any way. We don't care where the data comes from, whether it's from the city government, federal sources, or any other organization that gathers data. Datasets that describe San Diego could include:
- Number of cars driving on the 163 each day
- Number of applications to universities in San Diego this year
- Job listings in San Diego posted to LinkedIn each week
- Number of building permits issued this year, by neighborhood
- Voter turnout, by neighborhood
- Prices of goods sold in San Diego on Craigslist
- Weather data
What does "freely available" mean?
Primarily, it means online, and for free. Beyond that, we also like data available in a machine readable format. Many public data sets are only accessible after filing Freedom of Information Act or Public Records Act requests, and even then, people often have to wrangle with lawyers and opaque fees to get the data. We don't like this, and we want to prevent it as much as possible.
At this point, Internet technology is advanced enough to make it relatively inexpensive to make many large data sets available online for very little operational costs. San Diego is full of really smart people—we can figure out how to do this.
Also, Open San Diego is not only interested in public or government data. We're looking for any data produced anywhere that describes life in San Diego.
We are not a transparency organization!
We want to emphasize that Open San Diego is focused exclusively on making data more available to anyone. We have no other objectives beyond that. If people are able to use data to shine light on things that had been kept hidden, that's great, but it's not part of our stated objectives.
Also, we are not a political organization in any way.
Why we do it
Data—if it's gathered properly—has the power to describe life in San Diego in a verifiable way. Data can be used describe an extremely wide variety of things. Having easy to access data about our city can help politicians make better policies, journalists tell more compelling stories, community organizations run smarter programs, and businesses create smarter jobs.
We also want to highlight the importance of knowing how to use data. The data science industry is growing rapidly, and San Diego's economy is well-positioned to benefit from this growth. One thing we want to do at Open San Diego is shine a spotlight on data scientists and show how important and exciting their work can be. We want to make sure San Diego's students and employers are paying attention to this important trend.
How you can help
Join our community! The best thing you can do to help Open San Diego is to show your support by following us on Twitter and joining our Google group. It may sound silly, but such a simple act allows us to show that this movement has real support. This will help us find more collaborators and eventually raise funds.
Then, of course, participate! Contribute your thoughts and ideas to our group and try to come out to events. We'll announce them on this page, on the group, and through Twitter.
Our current focus is to find data about San Diego that are already available online and help people find them more easily. If you know of any data that we should be aware of, please email us at hi@opensandiego.org.