This afternoon, I attended the launch of the Opportunity Project at the White House. The Opportunity Project is an initiative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that uses Census Bureau data to help cities and local governments use new, curated, open data to account for how they use federal housing dollars.

The Opportunity Project’s curated data set is a new way that the federal government is collaborating with local leaders, technologists, non-profits and community members to leverage data to expand access to opportunity and fair housing across the country. Through this data set – which is derived from American Community Survey data and other Census Bureau sources – users can navigate a wealth of information on access to jobs, transit and schools. Armed with this information on neighborhood-level opportunities and challenges, communities can expand access to opportunity for their members.

Director Thompson speaks about The Opportunity Project.

As part of the project, in January the government brought together eight cities and a dozen private sector and non-profit software development teams to use Opportunity Data to create user-friendly digital tools that help communities navigate and visualize information about their neighborhoods. Some of the participants included developers from Zillow, Redfin and Socrata; experts from the Urban Institute, Ford Foundation and Esri; and local data leads from New Orleans, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Today, the developers launched their tools, which visualize everything from school test scores to community health outcomes to median commute times. In addition, the White House launched the Opportunity interactive site with the curated data set packaged in an accessible format. This information is now at the fingertips of local leaders, community organizers, non-profits, media, and families to use in creative and innovative ways.

U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith, introduces Census Bureau Director John Thompson at the White House rollout of the Opportunity Project.

The Opportunity Project is just one example of how the Census Bureau is working to make its data widely and easily accessible. HUD and the Census Bureau have been closely partnering on data outreach for the past year, including on CitySDK, which makes it easier to build products with open data (including the Opportunity data set) from the federal government. The Opportunity Project deepens our engagement with software developers, in conjunction with the newly created Commerce Data Service as well as the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, Domestic Policy Council and Office of Management and Budget. We look forward to continuing to leverage our technology and data in the future to help facilitate agencies and the public in further expanding access to opportunity and fair housing.