New and Notable on Data.wa.gov
Open Data and Sustainable Development Goals
Early March brings Open Data Week, organized by the Open
Knowledge Foundation to celebrate open data around a chosen theme. This year's theme
is how open data sheds light on progress toward the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), established in 2015 as “a shared
blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” In step
with this theme, the state Open Data Program is launching a year-long series
highlighting state datasets related to SDGs, starting with campaign finance and lobbying data from the Washington Public Disclosure Commission.
New Data.wa.gov Homepage
Data.wa.gov got a new homepage in February, building on recommendations from a 2023 usability study and user
feedback.
The new homepage more clearly focuses on the
portal's collection of tabular data, or data that can be displayed in a
spreadsheet. It also allows navigation by topic, invites data users to
get involved with the Open Data Program, and provides
expanded guidance for users, developers and publishers.
Revamped Landing Pages for Datasets
The portal vendor, Tyler Technologies, has reorganized landing pages for datasets and other content. Users first see the About tab, providing an overview with description, attribution, column definitions and other metadata. A preview of the data table now appears on a second Data tab, while visualizations or other derivatives are on a third Related Content tab.
From all three tabs, users will see new dropdown menus in the upper right corner. The "Actions" menu includes options for querying or visualizing the data, following the dataset, or contacting the dataset owner. The "Export" menu provides options for exporting the data.
- Need a little extra help? Contact opendata@wa.gov
New Data: K-12, Vehicle Registrations & More
Over the past year, state agencies added the latest K-12 school data, as well as new content on vehicle registrations, state contracts, fisheries, campaign finance, art collections, local libraries, childcare and child protection services, business licenses and hospital charity care.
Election Year Open Data
U.S. presidential election years are a great time to explore Washington state's extensive open data on campaign financing, maintained by the state Public Disclosure Commission. A visualization tool from the Washington Public Disclosure Commission allows the public to map where campaign contributions are coming from, and see how financial support changes over time. The PDC also added a new dataset in 2023 on Last Minute Contributions to Candidates and Political Committees.
New Official Lists of Washington Counties and Cities
Have you ever needed a list of all of the counties or cities in Washington state? Have you ever needed to know what county a Washington city is in? The Office of Financial Management (OFM) has the answers in its official lists of Washington state counties and cities on data.wa.gov.
Here are some ways to use these datasets:
- Look up what county a city is in.
- Get the geographic codes for a county or city to share data with someone with GIS skills.
- Get the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) codes for cities and counties.
- Analyze data that uses FIPS codes along with data that uses city names.
- Establish an official list that everyone in an organization uses so there is only one spelling of Pend Oreille, for example.
Download these lists or connect an Excel workbook directly to the lists using an application programming interface (API). If you haven't used an API feed in Excel before, this is a quick feature to learn that keeps your data up to date. Learn how here: Keep Open Data Up to Date in Excel (Using APIs).
How will you use these datasets? Let us know at opendata@wa.gov.