Software Development

How Philly’s Chief Data Officer helped relaunch San Diego’s open data site

The City of San Diego used JKAN, an open source portal built by none other than the City of Philadelphia's Tim Wisniewski.

Tim Wisniewski, the City's top data officer. (Photo by Flickr user PhillyMDO, used under a Creative Commons license)

The City of San Diego relaunched their open data portal last month, boasting in a blog post about the new site’s flashy capabilities like automated data sourcing.

Behind the push for a spruced-up portal of open data is JKAN, a lightweight open data portal built in 2016 by none other than City of Philadelphia Chief Data Officer Tim Wisniewski.

“We can’t take ALL the credit for this new portal,” wrote Andrell Bower, who coordinates San Diego’s open data program. “We based our new portal on an open-source project by Tim Wisniewski, Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. The open-source portal he created, called JKAN, was instrumental in getting us up and running with our own version. (Thanks, Tim!!!)”

The hacker in black strikes again.

“It’s great to see this open-source project helping a city like San Diego achieve its open data goals,” said Wisniewski. “Their team has made awesome improvements to it, and their announcement sheds light on all the work that goes on behind the scenes of an open data program.”

Wisniewski, who became the City’s data honcho in 2014, also said he wanted to relay a message to readers of Technical.ly:

“You can also contribute to JKAN by coming up with ideas for new features or implementing them using a basic templating language.”

(If you really want to geek out about the platform, read Wisniewski’s interview with U.S. Open Data.)

Companies: City of Philadelphia

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending

What actually is the 'creator economy'? Here's why we should care

How Berkadia's innovation conference demonstrates its commitment to people and technology

Skills, not schools: A new path for government tech

Celebrate Philly’s winners of the 2024 Technical.ly Awards

Technically Media