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Open Data Team Earns Governor’s Awards for Excellence

05/09/2018

Harrisburg, PA  Governor Wolf today presented Governor’s Awards for Excellence to three Office of Administration (OA) employees for improving public transparency, citizen engagement and government operations through state open data.

The OA team of Julie Snyder, John Long and Jere Matthews lead the implementation of the commonwealth’s open data program, including the state open data portal and the commonwealth’s first-ever hackathon.
“The open data program is focused on creating new opportunities from the data that the commonwealth already possesses,” said Secretary of Administration Sharon Minnich, whose office oversees the program. “The OA employees being recognized today have been instrumental to our ongoing efforts to make our data open to the public and foster collaboration around its use.”
Governor Wolf established the open data program through an executive order in 2016. The three OA employees worked closely with state agencies to identify and provide data for the OpenDataPA portal: https://data.pa.gov/. Today, it contains over 100 data sets on transportation, public safety, education, economic development and many other topics. 
With a robust open data portal established, the team then set out to engage the public to use the data to find innovative solutions to issues important to them. In the fall of 2017, the commonwealth hosted the first-ever hackathon of commonwealth open data, Code4PA, in partnership with Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, Code for Philly and Technology Council of Central PA. The month-long competition brought together over 200 government officials, students, technology professionals and others in Harrisburg and Philadelphia to develop new apps and services based on data sets from OpenDataPA.
Julie, John and Jere are currently planning Code4PA 2018, which will focus on open data to combat the opioid epidemic.
The Governor’s Awards for Excellence recognize commonwealth employees for exemplary job performance or service that reflects initiative, leadership, innovation and/or increased efficiency. A total of 47 employees from 10 agencies received awards for 2017.
Media contact: Dan Egan (OA), 717-772-4237
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