Open Data Catalogs Available
We plan to publish open data information on a variety of sources. Some data will be published here, on this site; for example if we need to transform an HTML table into a spreadsheet for easy access. Other machine-readable data will simply have a metadata pointer to an official data source that you can point open data tooling at.
We will provide metadata pointers to non-machine readable data in many cases - for example, Massachusetts towns produce annual reports with many embedded bits of data. For those cases, we may simply point to the relevant page on a PDF file, as an aid for human consumption.
Please note that town data is updated frequently, so past visualizations or datasets may not reflect the current data.
Datasets About Governance
Town annual reports are published in PDF files, sometimes even as images or scans, meaning there is no simple way to machine read important data. Here, we provide the metadata in a standardized DCAT format that allows other researchers to at least index within these files to find useful tables.
See our available annual reports and other governance open data information.
Datasets About Finance
Similarly, many towns provide budgets as a collection of HTML pages, or in other formats that may require interaction to really understand the data. Until towns provide proper open data for budgets, this metadata can help you quickly find the best budget sources for various comparable towns.
See our available financial and budget open data information.
Datasets About Local News Organizations
See our basic datasets locally-owned news sites for Arlington and various other MA municipalities.
Datasets About Policing
See our basic datasets about police department budgets and staffing for Arlington and comparable towns.
Datasets About Schools
See a few of our basic datasets about educational statistics for Arlington from the Massachusetts DOE.
Datasets About Demographics
See a few of our basic datasets about demographics and population for Arlington from the US Census and other sources.
Datasets About Real Property
See a few of our basic datasets about real property ownership and valuation for Arlington from the GIS department and other sources.