City of Philadelphia is the most active U.S. city on GitHub

The City of Philadelphia is the most active U.S. city government on developer platform GitHub, Chief Data Officer Mark Headd said recently on Twitter. That means the Nutter administration, and more specifically Headd and his data team, led by city CIO Adel Ebeid, has shared more open source data resources than any other American municipality.

It’s one way that the city is showing its commitment to transparency and its eagerness to be “developer-friendly”: by offering data that local developers can download and use to build apps. The idea here is that if the city shares openly its raw technical tools, then technologists will build more creative and helpful resources for regular citizens than city staff can do on their own.

With 24 downloadable directories of its data posted on the site, Philly bests cities like New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. The city’s available data sets include things like polling locations, property assessment information and red light camera locations.

The city’s GitHub use has actually been applauded by the San Francisco-based GitHub itself, who described Philly as an example of city using the platform to push its open data policy.