Kansas City, Missouri, is a leader in the civic open data world. When they created an innovative art exhibit that tasked local artists with interpreting city datasets from the open data portal, this open data storytelling series was born. The goal of this series was to convey best practices to other municipalities and show them how to promote the open data movement to citizens.

Key Message

Open data is a complex subject that could be boring to consumers and daunting to nontechnical government officials, but it’s an important step towards transparency for local governments. Successful open data projects can promote trust in government, engage the community, and educate citizens about how their government is serving them.

Components

• Blog posts
• Magazine article in Open Data magazine
• Storytelling video published on Open Data TV, Socrata’s video channel

Execution

I created a strategy for a serialized content package consisting of six blog posts, an image-rich magazine article, and a video. I commissioned and edited the blog posts, organized the video shoot and photo releases for all 10 artists, and produced the video with a local agency.

Results

The blog was the most popular blog published and the video was the most watched on Open Data TV. The Socrata sales team said that it was the best video the company had ever produced, and it was distributed as an introduction to open data for new municipalities. It was shared widely via social media. When it was shown at an open data conference, it garnered a great deal of praise and excitement from local government attendees.