Media Releases

World Council on City Data (WCCD) launches Open City Data Portal with the City of Los Angeles and the National League of Cities in LA

May 11, 2015

TORONTO, ON — Today at the open­ing of the Nation­al League of Cities (NLC) event, “Big Ideas for Cities”, the World Coun­cil on City Data (WCCD) Pres­i­dent and Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Glob­al Cities Insti­tute Direc­tor, Dr. Patri­cia McCar­ney launched the WCCD Open Data Por­tal, the world’s first open, online plat­form for glob­al­ly stan­dard­ised, ver­i­fied and com­pa­ra­ble city data.

The WCCD Data Por­tal is the excit­ing next step in the open data agen­da, enabling cities to com­pare and bench­mark their per­for­mance across 100 indi­ca­tors in the ISO 37120 stan­dard. The WCCD Open Data Por­tal, devel­oped by U of T’s Glob­al Cities Insti­tute and the WCCD, and built by Cana­di­an start-up Focus21 Inc., can be used by may­ors, city man­agers, chief inno­va­tion offi­cers, chief data offi­cers, city plan­ners, com­mu­ni­ty groups, cit­i­zens, indus­try lead­ers and researchers and is posi­tioned to become a glob­al cat­a­lyst for inno­va­tion and shar­ing.

Dr. McCar­ney said, “The launch of the WCCD Open Data Por­tal is the next step in lever­ag­ing the true pow­er of glob­al­ly com­pa­ra­ble, stan­dard­ized city data. The WCCD is extreme­ly proud to be able to launch this ground-break­ing tool at the “Big Ideas for Cities Event”, high­light­ing how impor­tant the WCCD Open Data Por­tal can be for Amer­i­can cities, regard­less of size. That we are launch­ing in Los Ange­les also allows us to offi­cial­ly wel­come LA as a WCCD ISO 37120 plat­inum cer­ti­fied city, and as a WCCD Foun­da­tion City. To have [Los Ange­les] May­or Garcetti join our Glob­al City Lead­ers Advi­so­ry Board to help guide the open city data agen­da into the future demon­strates his tremen­dous com­mit­ment to data informed lead­er­ship in city build­ing.”

Los Ange­les will be join­ing a group of “Foun­da­tion Cities” in the WCCD Open Data Por­tal includ­ing Boston, Toron­to, Lon­don, Barcelona, Dubai, Buenos Aires and Shang­hai, amongst oth­ers. Los Ange­les achieved the high­est-lev­el Plat­inum WCCD cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for ISO 37120, the first inter­na­tion­al stan­dard on city indi­ca­tors for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Under the lead­er­ship of May­or Garcetti, Los Ange­les has become a shin­ing exam­ple of the impor­tance of city data in plan­ning for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inclu­sive pros­per­i­ty, and har­ness­ing open data for inno­va­tion.

The WCCD is forg­ing new part­ner­ships with UNEP, UNISDR, ICLEI-Local Gov­ern­ments for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and sev­er­al nation­al gov­ern­ments that will bring some 100 new cities onto the WCCD Open Data Plat­form in the com­ing months, and see them cer­ti­fied as WCCD ISO 37120 cities at the upcom­ing Glob­al Cities Sum­mit in Dubai in 2016.

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For fur­ther enquiries, please con­tact:

James Pata­va
+14169662368
James.patava@globalcities.ca