Case Study: City of Hartford achieves rapid open-data adoption and regional thought leadership with Socrata

HartfordData: Paving the Way to Open Data Thought Leadership in the North East

Socrata partnered with the City of Hartford to launch HartfordData, an open data portal designed to increase transparency and improve decision-making. The challenge was twofold: city leadership and the public were eager to adopt open data, but many departments were unfamiliar with the landscape and worried about security, misuse of sensitive datasets, and limited internal capacity to maintain a platform.

Hartford piloted Socrata’s Open Performance software (supported by a Microsoft grant), choosing an easy-to-manage, intuitive solution that could be run by a small team. By publishing priority datasets (restaurant inspections, permits, GIS) and engaging the developer community via hackathons, the city saw immediate citizen and hacker-driven use, rapid app development, and growing internal buy-in—positioning Hartford to expand datasets, add visualizations, reduce FOIA burdens, and serve as an open-data leader for mid-sized Northeastern cities.

City of Hartford

Sabina Sitaru

Chief Innovation Officer, City of Hartford