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The Opportunity Project for Cities

Community tools, powered by local data.

A new model for innovation

The Opportunity Project for Cities puts open data to work. We bring together governments, community leaders, and tech volunteers to address local challenges through the power of open data and community engagement.

During the program, cities create a series of customized digital tools that speak to residents’ most pressing needs. The Opportunity Project for Cities builds a culture of government transparency, accessibility, and responsiveness that strengthens trust with residents and lays the foundation for lasting cocreated innovation.

Logo: The Opportunity Project for Cities, Community tools, powered by local data

How we work

The Opportunity Project for Cities is executed in a series of 20-week collaborative design sprints that increase community voice in government decision-making and produce valuable tools that address community problems.

During the design sprint, teams:

  • Understand a problem through community research, interviewing residents and other stakeholders to better define the problem they seek to address
  • Prototype, test, and build a product that uses open data to solve the problem
  • Launch the product and ensure that it is widely accessible and able to be sustained long-term

10
10 local governments from across the nation have completed The Opportunity Project for Cities program
61
61 team members have worked with The Opportunity Project for Cities program since its creation
438
438 residents have been engaged with during The Opportunity Project for Cities program

“We have to start understanding that there are areas that as a city government we do well and there are areas that Catholic charities do well. By working together on a project like The Opportunity Project for Cities, it shows the community not only can we work together well, we are building up that rapport, building up that trust together. “

Guadalupe Gonzalez
Rent Stabilization Program Analyst, City of San Jose
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