It’s official. The city’s Planning Department has had a bright idea.
Not just any bright idea, mind you, but one of the 111 certified Bright Ideas in Government, as determined by Harvard University.
The department’s Property Information Map, which can be found on the planning website, can provide a wealth of information about any address in the city, including construction dates for any buildings, land value, recent sales prices, planning information on the site and a host of other data.
The award, by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, cited the map for offering “an easy-to-use portal of real-time data” that helps make city government more transparent.
“Government innovation does not require endless resources and generous budgets,” Stephen Goldsmith, director of the center’s Innovations in Government effort, said in a statement. “Some of our country’s smartest innovations can in fact reduce government’s size while serving our citizens more efficiently and effectively.”
This isn’t the first award for the planning map. It recently received a Digital Government Achievement Award, a contest open to government agencies around the world.