Resources for What Works Cities
Learn how this site’s resources can help you meet WWC Certification criteria
Build a government residents can count on
The Sunlight Foundation’s Open Cities team partners with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities (WWC) initiative to help local governments improve residents’ lives by using data and evidence effectively to tackle pressing challenges. We do this by supporting U.S. cities to become more data-driven and data-democratized.
Whether you’re just starting out on developing an open data policy, or you’re ready to dive deeper into engaging and mobilizing your community with open data, the Roadmap to Informed Communities has resources that can help you work toward WWC Certification, the national standard of excellence for well-managed, data-driven local government.
Certification, which is open to any U.S. city with a population of 30,000 or more, helps local governments benchmark their progress and develop a roadmap for using data and evidence to deliver results for residents.
Completing a Certification assessment is the first step to participating in the program. Doing so makes your city eligible for a wide range of support from WWC, from access to the initiative’s learning network to the receipt of targeted technical assistance from WWC’s expert partners, including our team at Sunlight.
Start your WWC Certification assessment
Learn below how this site can support you in meeting the Open Data and Stakeholder Engagement WWC Certification criteria.
Open Data criteria:
| Criterion | Resource |
|---|---|
| 1. Your local government has a publicly available, codified open data policy that commits to data transparency and proactive public disclosure of local government data and data practices. | Sunlight’s Open Data Policy Hub > Policy Generator |
| 2. Your local government has a documented process for publishing open data. | Sunlight’s Open Data Policy Hub > Policy Guidelines |
Stakeholder Engagement criteria:
| Criterion | Resource |
|---|---|
| 1. Your local government tracks and documents insights about open data users and open data applications, and incorporates user needs into the design and implementation of its open data and transparency practices. | Roadmap to Informed Communities > Discovery > Problem-scoping & User Research |
| 2. Your local government provides clear how-to guidance to help residents access and use city data. | Roadmap to Informed Communities > Discovery > User Research (Further resources forthcoming) |
| 3. Your local government provides a clear process for partnership and collaboration with data users for the purpose of creating, revising, and/or improving the local government’s open data policies and practices. | Sunlight’s guide to participatory open data policy Roadmap to Informed Communities > Action > Collaboration Playbooks (Further resources forthcoming) |
| 4. Your local government provides a clear process for partnership and collaboration with data users for the purpose of inviting community members to use public city data to solve pressing community issues. | Roadmap to Informed Communities > Action > Collaboration Playbooks (Further resources forthcoming) |
Other criteria:
While Open Data and Stakeholder Engagement are the primary focuses of our work with What Works Cities, we also collaborate with partners at the Government Performance Lab and the Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) to provide support to meet Certification criteria on Results-Driven Contracting and Data Governance, respectively.
