Over the last few years, Kansas has been bubbling with activity. Citizens of the City of Wichita are hungry for change and an effort at the ground level has been forming to bring that change to the community. While the economic downturns of the country have left Wichita in a less-than-ideal situation, a growing amount of civic pride and duty is being utilized by Wichitans to turn their city into something better.
One of the community groups that formed was Open Wichita, the local civic hacking and open data initiative, also a Code For America brigade. Upon inception, the city immediately showed support. Both the City Manager, Robert Layton and the CIO, Mike Mayta, asked how they could help and became regularly involved in Open Wichita activities.
This was when I learned that Wichita is dedicated to open data and community engagement. Very quickly there began discussion of an Open Data Policy for the city. Layton and Mayta asked for Open Wichita to collaborate with them on it’s creation. They wanted to make sure the community was getting a policy it could truly benefit from. The result is a new, official instance of Madison for the city at drafts.wichita.gov to use for the creation of the policy, further establishing their commitment to community engagement.
The community responded by providing their input on the policy. Over 60 comments and annotations were submitted, engagement directly from citizens, which are now helping to shape the draft. While Open Data is a relatively new initiative within the city of Wichita, there is a clear desire from the community for a high quality policy surrounding it. The best environment for results is when city staff is as eager to benefit from Open Data as the rest of the community.
During a session with representatives from the What Works Cities program, city employees from every department expressed excitement to begin utilizing open data and bringing their practices into the 21st century. Another recurring theme emerged during the What Works Cities sessions: a desire to know what the citizens were thinking and feeling. As a member of OpenGov Foundation and of Open Wichita, this was very exciting. All cities have areas that they can improve on, but none of those changes can happen without an excited and willing staff within that city. I’ve witnessed first-hand that Wichita checks that box.
I’m very excited to see the growth that Wichita is going through on many levels at this time. When both local government as well as the citizens rise up to bring forth much needed change for their community, it’s inevitable that great things will happen.
Seth Etter is a Senior Developer at The OpenGov Foundation.
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