Cities and municipalities generate increasing volumes of data across their operations. Whether it is from business systems, sensor networks or customer interactions, harnessing this data effectively is central to becoming smarter and meeting challenges around efficiency, performance and risk management.

However, communities will only get value from their data if it is used widely by employees, citizens, businesses and other stakeholders. That means it has to be comprehensive, reliable, high-quality and trusted. Robust data governance is therefore essential to increasing data use and building truly smart communities.

The importance of data portals to data governance

At its heart, a data governance strategy covers how an organization identifies, organizes, handles, manages and uses data. It puts in place standards and processes to ensure that data is accurate, complete, valid, timely, consistent and available. Given the large amount of confidential, personal data that smart cities collect and generate, it also controls who can access particular data in order to be compliant with regulations and to protect privacy.

Data governance underpins data quality - but on its own, it does not enable cities and municipalities to increase the use of their data. That’s why it works best when combined with a data portal, which provides a unique, secure and easily accessible one-stop shop for all of a municipality’s data. This supports strong data governance by acting as a single source of truth for everyone – removing the risk of out-of-date or unreliable data being used internally or externally. By making effective data sharing a reality, data portals accelerate the use of data, further improving data governance.

Modern data portal solutions, such as Opendatasoft, are designed to integrate closely with data governance policies, with a range of key governance features built in. For example, they include powerful access rights that ensure that sensitive data can only be viewed by relevant, authorized users, supporting municipal security and data usage policies. Quality checks mean that unreliable or inconsistent data is not made available through the portal and that formats are standardized. As every data asset includes the details of its owner, any queries around quality can be swiftly followed up, delivering accountability.

With data available on portals in a range of formats, from raw data to visualizations, and dashboards, it is accessible and understandable by everyone. This reinforces data governance programs by demonstrating the value of well-governed data and encouraging greater data sharing.

Six best practices for robust municipal data governance

Alongside the data portal itself, municipalities can ensure robust data governance processes by following these six best practices:

1. Learn from others

Many industry bodies and state IT departments have created specific data governance policies and frameworks for municipalities. By starting with these resources and then adapting them to their needs, communities can save time while ensuring strong governance.

2. Get your leaders on-board

Often data governance programs fail as senior leadership doesn’t understand their benefits. Overcome this obstacle by demonstrating the importance of data governance to wider objectives, such as smart city programs, AI and transparency. This will help gain leadership backing and ongoing budget sign-off.

3. Educate the whole organization

Cities and municipalities cover a huge range of activities, all generating data. Therefore you need to work closely with data owners across the organization to bring them into the program. Use the fact that you want to share data on your portal as an opportunity to educate them about the benefits of a standardized data governance approach.

4. Build a data culture

Data portals and data governance are both part of a wider objective - creating data-centric smart communities. This relies on building a data culture, where everyone uses and shares data in their working lives. By making data accessible to all, everyone gets the chance to experiment (safely) with data, breaking down barriers to greater use.

5. Protect and secure against misuse

Data governance is essential to protect against any misuse of data. Put in place safeguards, especially through your data portal, to ensure that sensitive data is only accessible to relevant people.

6. Take an ecosystem approach

Smart communities bring together the public and private sectors. That means you need to create and communicate strong data governance rules across ecosystems – to increase quality and build greater trust..​​​​​​.

Data governance is a vital part of data portal programs, with the two areas working hand in hand to accelerate the secure and effective sharing of data across ecosystems. Cities and municipalities, therefore, need to embrace strong data governance frameworks, tailored to their specific requirements, to drive data portal success and create truly smart communities.