Video: How to Clear Roads with Open Data

For many of us, summer is fast approaching and thoughts of dangerous winter roads are far away. For Vennard Wright, the chief information officer of Maryland's Prince George's County, tackling problems like snow removal and other ways to improve neighborhoods are always on his mind.

Wright's goal as CIO is for Prince George's County to have two main data sets: one external to show members of the public where their tax dollars are being spent, and one internal for those in government to make informed decisions. 

As an example, snow on the roads affects several departments of the local government. Wright says open data helps all of them come together and make creative and effective decisions about snow removal.

"What we're trying to do is to make sure our decisions are quantified based on data," Wright said. "The way to do that was to put our information into a central repository, but also make it so that leaders could go into that repository and pull reports, maps or whatever was needed in order to quantify their decisions."

Check out Wright discuss open data further in the video, from Socrata's "Open Data TV," below: 

(Image via SF photo/ Shutterstock.com)