The Philadelphia Police Department‘s website now features an interactive crime map.
The map itself isn’t new: developer Dave Walk built it shortly after the city released its crime data one year ago. It was a hobby project for Walk, who was a city GIS staffer and time and is now the city’s Civic Technology Engineer.
It’s notable that a city agency is using an app built by a hobby project for a few reasons. For one, it’s placing a civic hacker project on a very public-facing website. It’s also a very tangible example of how the City of Philadelphia is benefiting from an open data release, but it also suggests a dedication to transparency. Not only will we offer up our data, the city is saying, but we’ll make it easy for you to look at and use.
Not to mention, it just looks cool.
Check out the redesigned PPD site here.
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