“One of our most valuable and underutilized resources in state government is data,” Wolf said. “Our goal is to make data available in order to engage citizens, create economic opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs, and develop innovative policy solutions that improve program delivery and streamline operations.”
According to an official press release, the portal will make government more accountable, modernize their systems by creating a central repository of data where other agencies’ federated data can be posted, and serve as a platform for innovation upon which developers and entrepreneurs can draw from.
“We’ve also put together a group of stakeholders to look at future datasets and what should be accessible to the public,” said Jeff Sheridan, a spokesperson for the governor’s office. “What Gov. Wolf wants to do is to make the people of Pennsylvania’s interaction with their state government more efficient and give them more useful information. … In the coming weeks we will also release a performance dashboard that uses these 12 data sets to track the performance goals.”
A list of Pennsylvania’s data sets can be found at OpenDataPA.
