WORCESTER — Five months after the city warned that publishing data about its spending online was too risky due to security risks, it began publishing that data again this month as part of a revamped and expanded open data portal.
“We now have a modern, open data portal,” Michael Hamel, the city’s chief information officer, told Telegram & Gazette on Friday, outlining a series of improvements he said are designed to balance transparency and security concerns.
The system, called Informing Worcester, collects a wealth of city data in one place, which is now updated more frequently and often automatically due to a major redesign of the city, Hamel said.
The redesign also includes resuming publication of spending data that the city released years ago but then stopped, citing cybersecurity risks.
City Manager Eric D. Batista told T&G in March that the city had decided against putting its pre-check registry back online for cybersecurity reasons.
In response, five good government organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote a letter to Batista urging him to restore this data in the interest of transparency.
The organizations wrote that while cybersecurity concerns are serious, they have not found a security expert who has recommended such “drastic measures.” The Massachusetts Municipal Association could not point T&G to similar trends in other parts of the state.
Batista’s March statement prompted several city councilors, including Mayor Joseph M. Petty, to ask the city to explore what it could do to restore some form of access.
Neither an Aug. 1 blog post by Batista nor a city press release announcing the revamped data portal referenced the ACLU letter or the city’s previously raised safety concerns.
Batista did not respond to requests for an interview last week. In response to questions emailed to a city spokesman, Batista said the city’s previous statements were not about “not restoring the data,” but rather that the current system would not be restored in its current form.
When asked for comment in April following the ACLU letter, Batista issued a statement through a spokesperson saying that while the city appreciated the organization’s stance, “the community continues to have concerns, both political and logistical, which are currently being discussed.”
Hamel told T&G on Friday that he believes the city has managed to strike a balance between its safety concerns and transparency with the redesigned portal.
The city’s old system exposed check numbers that raised the risk of fraud and had other vulnerabilities that have now been fixed by a new security infrastructure, Hamel said.
He said the decision was also made to redact certain vendor information on certain purchases that could impact security information or critical infrastructure, but that would only happen rarely and would be done in coordination with city attorneys, he added.
“At the moment I assume that there are no more than ten transactions,” he said, adding that he assumes the expenditure amounts would still be published.
Representatives of the organizations that wrote the letter to Batista praised the city for putting the data back online.
“We are very pleased to see the City of Worcester once again committing to financial transparency – a hallmark of good governance and a prerequisite for a strong democracy,” Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts wrote in an email. “Worcester residents have every right to see how their tax dollars are being spent, so we are relieved and encouraged that the City is changing course and making the checkbook available to the public again.”
Phineas Baxandall, policy director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, and Deirdre Cummings, legislative director of MASSPIRG, expressed similar sentiments.
“This data is important so that public officials can be held accountable and trusted with public funds,” Baxandall said.
The data, such as information about which contracts are awarded to which companies, is often an important starting point for questions from taxpayers, policy experts and journalists, Baxandall said.
In addition to tax data, the new portal has dozens of other information points that were previously unavailable or not so easy to find, said Hamel.
Hamel listed several dozen pieces of information that were added to the portal during the relaunch, including historical orders, budget information, police documents such as use-of-force reports and information on tax incentives.
The city has produced a short video on YouTube explaining how to use the system.
Hamel said that while some of the information on the redesigned portal was available elsewhere, much of it was not automatically updated – a deficiency that has been addressed by the redesigned system.
Hamel said he was extremely excited about the addition of StoryMaps, a data visualization technology that makes understanding and interacting with information much easier.
“It’s a great new component of this platform that allows us to make data much more accessible,” Hamel said.
Batista noted in his blog post that there are currently four StoryMaps – a history of Worcester in 10 maps, a virtual tour of the artwork on Main Street, an explanation of the city’s green infrastructure, and a detailed climate resilience map that includes a variety of climate maps, including an interactive heat map.
“I hope that Informing Worcester continues to grow and include more StoryMaps, datasets and documents and is made available to the public to help my administration increase its transparency,” he wrote.
“I want the portal to be a central point of contact for all information coming out of City Hall. Whether you want to read a notice or check if a house you want to buy has planning permission, you can find it at Informing Worcester.”
