Mayor Mike Huether announced that Sioux Falls has been selected as one of 85 cities in the nation to receive free training and resources to centralize all information and data on the city.   The city will receive a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ and our city will be part of the What Works Cities initiative, one of the largest-ever philanthropic efforts to enhance the use of data and evidence in the public sector.

Beth Warden/Results Radio
Beth Warden/Results Radio
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Currently if a department of the city wants to access information on a neighborhood, a request is made, and it can take hours, or even days for the information to be received.  The upgraded centralized information would make all of these details available immediately, as soon as the information is entered into the system.

As part of the What Works Cities initiative, Sioux Falls will improve open data practices to make public information more accessible and to engage residents around government priorities and services.

Huther says this will streamline the work for many city employees as they research neighborhoods, from infrastructure to crime.

The first area of municipal government to undergo the work will be neighborhood services, including code enforcement, with the goal of making the process replicable for other departments and divisions. There is no cost to the city and the mentors travel here for training sessions.

An end goal of the project with What Works Cities is to optimize the City’s existing open data portal, which today is used primarily for Geographic Information System (GIS)-associated information.


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