1001 Smart Cities
🇺🇸 Kansas City

Open Data KC: A Publishing Duty Written Into Law, and No Licence

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below · 🔎 Last verified · ◆ 7 sourced claims, none individually verified yet

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page

✎ Updated 20 Aug 2026 Publication date recorded for 4 sources. What changed →

Kansas City has one of the firmer legal duties to publish in the United States and one of the weaker statements of what anyone may do with the result. KCStat began putting departmental performance on the record in 2011, the portal opened in January 2013, and in June 2014 the council did by law what most American cities did by executive order: Ordinance No. 140443 enacted an Open Data Policy into the Code of Ordinances, requiring a portal at data.kcmo.org, an Open Data Officer, departmental liaisons, and that public data shall be published online and made freely available to all in a machine-readable open format, in both its raw and processed form. The ordinance contains no licensing or public-domain language at all.

Live 📅 since 2013
Outcome🔄 Ongoing
Evidence🏛️ Official
what does this mean?The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →
Run byCity of Kansas City, Missouri — DataKC, City Manager's Office
Scale🏙️ City-wide
FundingCity budget

📊 Impact

202 datasets in the catalogue on 19 August 2026, counted through the Socrata discovery API: 142 of them, 70%, carry no licence field. Of the 60 that do, 49 say Public Domain, five point at the terms of use, three carry the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence, one CC0, one Public Domain U.S. Government and one the Open Database Licence. The terms of use grant nothing in return: the city reserves the right to claim or seek to protect any patent, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights in the material, and asks anyone building on it to carry a disclaimer.

🎓 Lesson

A duty to publish and a right to reuse are two different laws, and Kansas City passed only the first. An ordinance is harder to revoke than an executive order, which makes the missing half more conspicuous rather than less.

📡 Data & IoTOpen dataDigital government

Sources

↗ Open Data Policy Hub — Kansas City, MO Open Data Ordinance No. 140443 (19 June 2014)
↗ Open Data KC — portalDataset and licence counts taken from the Socrata discovery API for the domain on 19 August 2026.
↗ Open Data KC — Terms of Use
↗ City of Kansas City — DataKCThe city's own site blocks automated retrieval (Akamai 403).
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 7 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 7 addressable claims, 4 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.

Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 7

The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.

Claim 1 clm-26ce7631d09b9993 quantitative
KCStat began putting departmental performance on the record in 2011, the portal opened in January 2013
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city's DataKC pages date KCStat to 2011 as a departmental performance measurement effort and the open data portal to January 2013. The city site blocks automated retrieval (Akamai 403), so no locator string could be lifted from the page directly.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. City of Kansas City — DataKC
Claim 2 clm-ec7efa5df15fd6f0 quantitative
Ordinance No. 140443 enacted an Open Data Policy into the Code of Ordinances, requiring a portal at data.kcmo.org, an Open Data Officer, departmental liaisons
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The ordinance record gives the number and date (No. 140443, 19 June 2014), states that it was enacted into the Code of Ordinances as Article XVI, and lists the portal, the Open Data Officer and the departmental open data liaisons among its requirements.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data Policy Hub — Kansas City, MO Open Data Ordinance No. 140443 (19 June 2014)
Claim 3 clm-0e615a8b06fe9d6b descriptive
public data shall be published online and made freely available to all in a machine-readable open format, in both its raw and processed form
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
This is quoted from the ordinance text itself.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data Policy Hub — Kansas City, MO Open Data Ordinance No. 140443 (19 June 2014)
Claim 4 clm-8e0624e84d20e044 descriptive
The ordinance contains no licensing or public-domain language at all
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The ordinance record states explicitly that it contains no explicit public domain dedication or licensing language; it defines open format but grants no reuse right.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data Policy Hub — Kansas City, MO Open Data Ordinance No. 140443 (19 June 2014)
Claim 5 clm-18693e768a303618 quantitative
202 datasets in the catalogue on 19 August 2026, counted through the Socrata discovery API: 142 of them, 70%, carry no licence field
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Counted directly against the Socrata discovery API for the domain data.kcmo.org on 19 August 2026, paging the full catalogue and tallying the metadata licence field: 202 datasets, 142 with no licence value.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data KC — portal
Claim 6 clm-ffda0661fcdf455e quantitative
Of the 60 that do, 49 say Public Domain, five point at the terms of use, three carry the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence, one CC0, one Public Domain U.S. Government and one the Open Database Licence
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Same count: the licence values present in the catalogue metadata on 19 August 2026 were Public Domain (49), See Terms of Use (5), Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (3), Creative Commons 1.0 Universal (1), Public Domain U.S. Government (1) and Open Data Commons Open Database License (1).
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data KC — portal
Claim 7 clm-96e7b1334e3aeced descriptive
the city reserves the right to claim or seek to protect any patent, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights in the material, and asks anyone building on it to carry a disclaimer
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The portal's terms of use reserve those rights in exactly those words and require applications built on the data to display a disclaimer naming the data as modified from its original source.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data KC — Terms of Use
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders

This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.

unreviewed Revision 2026-08-20-source-dates effective 2026-08-19 · created 2026-08-20

Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.

sha256:ef4ece6d40d51616e77545d2945143d42786d3297196177dd7df9207f9abb586
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
7
of 7 claims mapped
4
source dossiers
0
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
City of Kansas City, Missouri — DataKC, City Manager's Office
Actor types
city-government
Funding model
public
Funding description
City budget
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

4 source dossiers

Open Data Policy Hub — Kansas City, MO Open Data Ordinance No. 140443 (19 June 2014) opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-8c19b8113d9a263c
Publisher
Name not classified · opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-08-19
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
No locator recordedDescriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Open Data KC — portal data.kcmo.org · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-edf00adb9afe5d33
Publisher
Name not classified · data.kcmo.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-08-19
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Dataset and licence counts taken from the Socrata discovery API for the domain on 19 August 2026.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Open Data KC — Terms of Use data.kcmo.org · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4742913032d62d43
Publisher
Name not classified · data.kcmo.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-08-19
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
No locator recordedDescriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
City of Kansas City — DataKC kcmo.gov · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-222155870742903a
Publisher
Name not classified · kcmo.gov
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-08-19
Dossier created
2026-08-20
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The city's own site blocks automated retrieval (Akamai 403).

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
  • Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
  • Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
  • A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
  • The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇨🇭 Open Data Zürich: CC0 Government Data Catalogue · Zürich The opposite end of the licence ladder: Zurich licenses every one of 937 datasets, Kansas City leaves 70% of 202 unlicensed. 🇺🇸 Washington D.C.'s open data policy, ArcGIS Hub portal and licence · Washington D.C. Two American portals that legislate publishing and then muddle the licence — D.C. contradicts itself, Kansas City stays silent. 🇺🇸 Chicago's Open Data Executive Order and Portal · Chicago Ordinance versus executive order: Kansas City put the duty in its code, Chicago in a mayoral order. Neither names a licence.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains📊 Open data guide🏙️ Kansas City city profile📡 Data & IoT projects📖 Open data📖 Urban data platform (UDP)📖 Building performance standard (BPS)
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Open Data KC: A Publishing Duty Written Into Law, and No Licence” — Kansas City, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/kansas-city-open-data/ (last verified 2026-08-19). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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