Case Study: City of Chicago achieves increased transparency and 33% more inspections with Tyler Technologies' DHD and Socrata

Electronic System and Data Insights Increase Transparency and Efficiency

The City of Chicago, home to 2.7 million residents and more than 7,300 restaurants, faced inefficient, paper-based food inspection processes that limited fieldwork, blocked data analysis and generated a heavy burden of public records requests. The city needed a way to streamline inspections, improve compliance oversight and provide greater transparency to residents.

By implementing Tyler Technologies’ Digital Health Department (DHD) and the Socrata Open Data Portal, Chicago digitized inspections and published real-time data for public use. Sanitarians now spend about 90% of their time in the field, completed inspections rose roughly 25% initially and settled around a 33% gain, FOIA requests for inspection reports fell by about 90%, and the city can run heatmaps and trend analyses to improve operations and civic transparency.

City of Chicago

Gerrin Butler

Director of Food Protection