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Data Strategy & Governance

The City of San José is committed to providing fair, high-quality, and efficient services for everyone who lives, works, or does business here. Data helps us better understand how services are delivered and how we can improve them. It also helps us discover new areas where we can serve the community more effectively.

Citywide Data Strategy 

The Citywide Data Strategy promotes the use of data to make City services better, faster, and more equitable. City departments use data every day from making streets safer to planning housing initiatives. City data was often stored in separate places, which made it hard for the City to get the full picture. 

This approach will turn the City’s data use into a service, developing a new data storage and sharing system, enhancing transparency by making our data accessible to the public.

Our Citywide Data Strategy focuses on three foundational principles:  

  1. Data as a Service (DaaS): Under this “Data as a Service” model, City leadership will be able to focus on analyzing and solving operational, management, and policy level problems that the City faces instead of spending time and resources on creating duplicate, siloed and isolated data infrastructure solutions. This will also include a data governance model allowing departmental data stewards to maintain full control and be responsible for the lifecycle management of their data assets.

  2. Communities of Practice: The City will continue training staff across departments in data skills and creates shared standards to support teamwork and innovation. To achieve this, the City will establish data standards while continuing to learn from each other and brainstorm new and innovative methods.

  3. Measuring Impact: Data updates how the City tracks performance and connects services with outcomes that matter to the public. Focusing data governance on measuring impact establishes a strong foundation for performance management. It enhances accountability and transforms data into actionable insights, enabling effective evaluation of programs and policies while guiding continuous improvement and strategic adjustments.

Read the City's Data Strategy News Release.

Learn about the City's data working groups.

Data Governance Policy

The City of San José’s Data Governance Policy helps make sure the City’s data is well-organized, protected, and easy to use. This means better, faster services for residents and smarter decision-making across departments. Managed by the City’s Information Technology Department, this effort brings all departments together to manage data responsibly, support fairness, and get ready for future technologies like artificial intelligence.

Three key focuses of the Data Governance Policy:

  • Improving Service Delivery: Helps City departments use accurate, up-to-date data to provide better and faster services to residents.
  • Protecting Data and Privacy: Ensures that personal and City data is stored securely and shared responsibly, following privacy rules.
  • Preparing for the Future: Builds a strong foundation for using advanced technologies like artificial intelligence in a safe and thoughtful way.

Data Upskilling

The Data Upskilling Program is designed to help City staff enhance their data skills, enabling them to combine technical knowledge with domain expertise to transform data into meaningful insights. Staff are tasked with selecting topics related to their day-to-day departmental work and business requirements to explore using data to support this work.

Learn more about the Data Upskilling Program on the City's IT Training Academy page.

Learn more about the City's journey establishing the Data Upskilling Program on the GovAI Coalition's Substack.

Citywide Data Hub 

The City of San José is working to make better use of its data by creating a central data platform called the Citywide Data Lakehouse. This new system will help the City move away from siloed, duplicate data sets. Instead, it brings City data together in one place so that staff and leaders can see the full picture when making decisions. 

The Citywide Data Hub: 

  • Supports data-driven decisions for City managers and policymakers 

  • Improves efficiency by ending duplicate systems and one-off processes 

By connecting this data platform to the Open Data Portal, we’ll make it easier and faster to publish high-quality data that residents, researchers, and community groups can use. 

Open Data Portal 

The City of San José is committed to being open, transparent, and accountable. Through our Open Data Portal, we provide free access to public data in easy-to-use, machine-readable formats. This means anyone, including residents, businesses, or developers, can use the data to learn more about City services or even create their own tools and insights. 

Open data helps the City: 

  • Build trust by being transparent and sharing information. 

  • Improve services by using data to find what works and what needs fixing. 

  • Save time and money by making data easy to find and use. 

  • Encourage innovation by giving people tools to build new apps, dashboards, or ideas. 

The City’s strategy is based on the Open Data Community Architecture (ODCA), a flexible and collaborative approach that helps different departments work together to share information more effectively. We use a tool called Data Chartering to decide which problems to focus on and how data can help. 

The City is always open for feedback from the community via e-mail at opendata@sanjoseca.gov for further improvements in its data approach. 

Data Resources

City of San José Open Data Portal 

City of San José Open Data Policy