License to Inspect: two years later, City of Philadelphia L&I API will drive PlanPhilly transparency app
A screenshot of a draft of the License to Inspect tool, built by Azavea for PlanPhilly using the new L&I app. Click to enlarge.
If the deadlines of today are worth more than the deadlines of the past, the City of Philadelphia is due to release before the end of the year the first, most comprehensive agency data API framework in its history. It will power an online tool billed as a giant leap forward in city transparency.
Nearly two years in the making, an online application that allows unheard of data access to the city’s Licenses and Inspections Department — with as much as a year of deep digitized and categorized records to start — will be unveiled by built environment news site PlanPhilly, having been developed by GIS specialty shop Azavea with support from the city’s newly renamed Office of Innovation and Technology and with funding from the William Penn Foundation.
If fast tracked, the project, dubbed ‘License to Inspect,’ could be a signature good government initiative in Mayor Nutter’s reelection bid come November.
More likely, it will land around the new year and the process for the data release — sharing an in-house API to be built upon by a third party — could likely serve as a landmark example for municipal government transparency, a thoughtful, progressive move from a city government trying to raise its standing in the technology community. The trouble, of course, say numerous sources close to the matter, is how long and how much trouble the project took — and what will happen to the API once the app goes live.
Will the L&I data release be a treasure trove of lessons learned to continue the march toward all-agency buy in around data or will it be characterized as enough of a boondoggle as to keep other city department heads wary of the headache?
Alteva
