The One Seattle Data Strategy is a three-year plan and would be the City’s first comprehensive and cohesive effort to address how we collect, store, use, and share data internally and externally.

Read Our One Seattle Data Strategy

The strategy identifies four key pillars to address:

1. Data quality and governance: Strengthening data management and quality standards by establishing unified standards and processes for data management across City agencies.
2. Data literacy and culture: Empowering City staff to lead and innovate with data by establishing data leadership at all levels of the organization, upskilling staff, and creating opportunities for City employees to use data to inform decisions.
3. Data use and equity: Leveraging resources and knowledge for increased collaboration, equity analysis, and consumption of data that will lead to data-informed outcomes, improved transparency, governance, and citizen engagement.
4. Data and community engagement: In addition to advancing our Open Data practices, we will launch work to drive better data transparency, communication, and connection with community members.

The Data Strategy is part of Seattle’s participation in the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance, which works with cities across the Americas to bolster their use of data to strengthen government operations, innovate public services, and produce better outcomes for residents. Seattle was selected to participate in the City Data Alliance due to its strong track record of using data to inform decisions and improve services. Seattle’s participation in the City Data Alliance builds on its work through the Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Certification, which sets a standard of excellence for data-informed, well-managed local government, and recognized the City with Gold Certification.

The City of Seattle hosted a mini-hackathon competition on December 14th to engage data scientists, students, and interested community members with the City’s Open Data portal as part of the new One Seattle Data Strategy.

An interdepartmental City effort led by the Innovation and Performance (IP) team has been working with the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance throughout 2023 to develop a plan for each pillar. The plans include a mix of short-term priorities – like a new internal data collaboration portal – with longer-term efforts like updating Seattle’s open data policy. The draft Data Strategy identifies projects, policies, and processes to be developed, iterated, and evaluated from 2024-2026. Timelines vary by project, but the general approach is to draft, socialize, and test ideas in 2024, iterate and improve those ideas in 2025, and formalize and fully implement them in 2026.