What Works Cities is a $42 million program geared toward helping medium sized cities (100K to 1M people) realize their open data potential.
The Bloomberg Philanthropies program has already partnered with San Francisco and San Jose, definitely larger cities, prior to Victorville, population ~121,000, getting tapped as well. The two bay area cities partnered up in December of last year.
In a report from Bloomberg, it was found that while city leaders say they are committed to using data in a variety of ways going forward, there is often a lack of resources to mold solutions.
Victorville already had partnered with OpenGov and provides a user friendly dive into the city’s financials going back to FY 2011-12.
The What Works Cities website describes Victorville’s plan for open data as to “establish and improve open data practices to better share data with city managers and the public.”
"The concept of open data is not new, but the application of open data in City Government is extremely new," Mayor Pro Tem Jim Cox said in a statement. "Very few cities are making data accessible for residents to manipulate and use freely as they see fit."
San Jose will “develop the capacity to conduct low-cost real time evaluations of city programs to make adjustments and improve results and enhance open data practices.”
And San Francisco will “shift contracting practices to focus on structuring and managing contracts to deliver better results.”
More on What Works Cities and the California Cities involved can be found here. http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20160310/victorville-joins-26-cities-in-open-data-collaborative
Image Credit: Flickr User AaronLMGoodwin, https://flic.kr/p/q27ejP via (CC BY-ND 2.0)