The Maryland Department of Information Technology (MDIT) on March 28 announced the launch of its redesigned Open Data Portal, which supports 60,000 unique users accessing roughly 1,300 publicly available datasets annually.
In a statement, MDIT explained that the updates focused on improving the user experience by “streamlining and reorganizing data category tiles to drive the end user to the data they need.” The portal now also includes “enhanced story features,” which, according to the state, combine narrative content, data visualizations, and media inputs to tell a story of how “data-driven and evidence-based information are supporting initiatives to better the lives are citizens in Maryland and beyond.”
“Interest in open data has expanded throughout the world and with over 8,500 unique users accessing Maryland’s Open Data Portal per month,” said Michael G. Leahy, secretary of MDIT. “Demand for greater transparency, accessibility, and ease of use continues to grow and the citizens of Maryland expect data to be available to them as fast as they request it.”
On top of redesigning the Open Data Portal, Maryland has also adopted a new cloud platform, which provides state agencies a single point of access to different data sources in a secure environment. The new platform “enables the state’s 129 agencies to store, analyze, visualize, and publish data within their agencies, between branches of government, and to the public through the Open Data Portal,” MDIT explained.
