When Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2011, he made a major policy decision to increase police transparency by releasing NOPD calls for service data to the public online through the City’s Open Data Portal. The move made raw police data available to the public for the first time and allowed individuals and groups to examine and analyze police responses and interactions throughout the city.

Since then, the NOPD has led the way in making criminal justice data available and easily accessible to the public. Just last year, The Sunlight Foundation – a national, non-profit organization focused on government transparency and accountability –touted the NOPD as being “ahead of the curve” on open data. The organization called the amount of data the NOPD publishes online “uncommon” and said the department has “excelled in producing criminal justice data.”

In the story of New Orleans’ recovery, data has played a vital and steadfast role from day one. Population counts, the number of blighted properties, and the number of returning school children, among many other data points all weighed heavily on decisions made by citizens and government alike post-Katrina.

In early 2011, the City of New Orleans made a first step to make the data that it manages more available to citizens and policy-makers. The Information Technology and Information department went live with a website called data.nola.gov. The platform began with just a handful of datasets, liberated by City departments and agencies that wanted to share information for the common good. 

In April, the City of New Orleans took further steps in fulfilling its commitment to the White House Police Data Initiative by publishing its stop and search data (also known as field interview cards), body camera metadata and in-car camera metadata.

The Police Data Initiative launched in May 2015, and New Orleans was an inaugural participant along with 20 other police jurisdictions. The initiative was launched as recommendation of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing to “emphasize the opportunity for departments to better use data and technology to build community trust.”