Boston Government

Nowadays, if one government try to be truly effective governments, they can’t just look at themselves as just an administrative organization any more. They need to become smart governments. According to what we learned from the smart city class, Smart government should complete open data, integrate social, mobile, cloud and information into their day-to-day operations and strategic planning. Like there are some popular applications of open data for government to build a smart government, they are Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Geoplatform and City dashboard. For example, with the help of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), the government could support the citizens an organized information infrastructure which share spatial data and supply smart city applications; likewise, the Geoplatform could match the government and public needs well by sharing geospatial data, services, and applications. And the city dashboard is highly acceptable by the citizens, and it should be the summary of the government and public’s simple understanding. With various use of open data, the government could increase the transparency of government’s work and make good collaboration with every social partner（让更多party更好地参与）; direct improved city planning and inspire job creation; driving Economy process fast and efficient.  ^[a]

According to Eden Strategy Institute, which has just come up with the top 50 smart cities of 2018-19, Boston was seventh. This is the first time that they take the roles that city governments play in leading a smart city strategy into consideration, which we could tell that a smart government is really play an important role currently and Boston definitely has a smart government. ^[b]

As far as we could know, Boston government has built some open data websites as their government open resources for citizens to utilize. Like it has Analyze Boston (https://data.Boston.gov)which is Boston's open data hub that people could get almost every information about the government open database sets through it which will completely make the Boston’s citizens life much more convenient. If we search “crime”, on the Analyze Boston website we could get the dataset under the “Public Safety” topics provided by Boston Police Department (BPD) and containing records about almost all kinds of crime that happened in Boston, and if we continue to make a further “Theft” search in these reports, we could get a specific detail records of all the theft crime that had been happened in the past time, which includes multiple fields capturing when, where, and how the incident occurred, as well as who was involved. With open data like these, if I am a citizen of Boston, and I try to consider move to a new district in Boston, before I make a decision, I could do a little bit search through the open data of the government provided website like what we presented above, then it will definitely help me to know this district safety status in a fast and convenient way, and that will help me a lot with making a choice of whether I’m going to move in or not.^[c]

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Likewise, Boston government has the high technology application like geospatial datasets which is a branch application of Analyze Boston (https://Bostonopendata-Boston.opendata.arcgis.com), it is established by the Boston's GIS team, and we could also find and use various of datasets easily and quickly like the Hydrography with the water body features through the Geoplatform.^[d] 

In fact, we could also find these open data functions on the Massachusetts government websites (https://www.mass.gov/ and https://opendata.digital.mass.gov/#/), which could also give Boston a strong support of building a smart government with open database.^[e]