New Westminster – The City of New Westminster is proud to announce that it was placed on the list of Top 20 Open Cities by Public Sector Digest for the second year in a row. In 2015, the City undertook an open data policy consistent with its Intelligent City initiative and launched an open data website with the goal of encouraging citizenship engagement by making municipal information easily accessible.

“I’m happy with the work that has been put into our open government initiative to date, and we are continuing to improve on our transparency to the public,” said City of New Westminster Chief Information Officer Alvin Chok. “Being recognized as one of the top open cities nationally is good validation that our efforts are paying off.”

The open data initiative was undertaken with collaboration and cooperative efforts from every department at City Hall, resulting in an open data website that currently houses 12 categories of data and over 89 data sets available for easy public viewing in various downloadable formats.

“It’s important to us at the City to maintain an open and transparent relationship with our community, which in turn widens community engagement,” said Mayor Jonathan Coté. “I encourage everyone to explore our open data site and provide feedback and ideas for improvement.”

To date, data sets on our open data website have more than doubled since launch with staff continuing to add to the site regularly. The site can be accessed at opendata.newwestcity.ca

The Public Sector Digest article on the 2016 Open Cities Index can be accessed at  http://publicsectordigest.com/2016-open-cities-index-top-20-results.

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Contact:

Alvin Chok
City of New Westminster Chief Information Officer
604-527-4553 or