The Global Impact of Open Data

Chapter 13. United States’ New York City Business Atlas

Leveling the Playing Field

By Andrew Young, David Sangokoya and Stefaan Verhulst

Summary: While retail entrepreneurs are experts in their respective trades, they often lack access to high-quality information about economic conditions in the neighborhoods where they operate or are considering operating. The NYC Business Atlas is designed to alleviate that information gap by providing a public tool that gives small businesses access to high-quality data to help them decide where to establish a new business or expand an existing one. The tool brings together a diversity of data, including business-filing data from the Department of Consumer Affairs, sales tax data from the Department of Finance, demographic data from the census and traffic data from Placemeter, a New York City startup focusing on real-time traffic information.

Dimension of Impact: Creating Opportunity—Economic Growth

Key Takeaways:

• The impact of open data can be amplified when government works directly with private business on targeted initiatives. Such “data collaboratives” represent a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors—including private companies, research institutions and government agencies — can exchange data to help solve public problems.¹

• Although a large number of early stage open data projects around the world focus on simply pushing information out, the next stage should ...