1001 Smart Cities
🇺🇸 San Francisco

DataSF and San Francisco's Open Data Law

🤖 AI-generated summary · ◆ 9 sourced claims · 🔎 Last verified

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.

9 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.

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

✎ Corrected 22 Aug 2026 1 claim added. What changed →

The duty to publish sits in the city code, and the compliance record is itself a dataset — which is how anyone can count the 474 inventoried datasets that are still unpublished.

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 byDataSF, Office of the Chief Data Officer, City Administrator's Office, City and County of San Francisco
Scale🏙️ City-wide

Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 9 more in San Francisco · 📊 Open data guide · 📡 Data & IoT projects

San Francisco's portal opened in 2009 under Mayor Newsom's Executive Directive 09-06. A 2010 ordinance put the duty into Administrative Code Chapter 22D; a 2013 ordinance added a Chief Data Officer and department data coordinators. Unusually for a US city, the data carries a recognised open licence, PDDL 1.0, and the inventory Chapter 22D requires is itself published as a dataset.

Live 📅 since 2009

📊 Impact

659 datasets in the portal catalogue, read 26 July 2026; police incident reports are republished daily and were current that day. The inventory the ordinance requires is public and was refreshed the same day: of 1,308 inventoried datasets, 696 are marked published, 474 not published, 77 internal, 51 in progress and 7 in scoping. 153 published datasets that are not flagged historical had gone more than a year without a data update.

🎓 Lesson

An executive order can lapse with the administration that signed it. San Francisco put the duty in the code and publishes the compliance record itself as a dataset — which is why anyone can count the 474 inventoried datasets that are still unpublished without asking the city.

📡 Data & IoTOpen dataDigital government

Sources

↗ Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, Executive Directive 09-06 (21 October 2009)The origin instrument, independently transcribed and analysed. Date: 'October 21, 2009', issued by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Carrying duties: 'All Department Heads or their designees shall strive to publish all datasets under their authority consistent with the DataSF authorization policy', with quarterly reviews of progress, and 'All datasets determined to be accessible to the public now and in the future shall be made available through DataSF.org.' The directive names the portal but does not date its launch.
↗ City and County of San Francisco — open data legislation text (Chapter 22D), city GitHub repositoryThe operative text, published by the city itself. SEC. 22D.2(a) makes the Chief Data Officer responsible for coordinating the portal, assisting departments with compliance and analysing usage, and (a)(5) to 'Present an annual updated citywide implementation plan to COIT, the Mayor, and…' the Board. SEC. 22D.2(b)(3) requires each department Data Coordinator to 'Prepare an Open Data plan for the Department', including 'a summary description of all data sets under the control of each…' department and 'a timeline for the publication of the Department's open data'. This is the sentence-level basis for the inventory and publishing-plan machinery.
↗ Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, 2013 revision to Chapter 22D (28 March 2013)The 2013 strengthening. Ordinance numbers reported in secondary summaries of this chain — Ordinance 293-10 (2010) codifying the policy as Administrative Code Chapter 22D, Ordinance 69-13 passed 16 April 2013 creating the Chief Data Officer and Department Data Coordinators — were not confirmed against the clerk's file, which is why the entry body says 'a 2010 ordinance' and 'a 2013 ordinance' rather than citing numbers.
↗ American Legal Publishing — San Francisco Administrative Code, Chapter 22D: Open Data PolicyThe codified chapter as it stands today, including SEC. 22D.2 (Chief Data Officer and City Departments) and SEC. 22D.3 (rules and technical standards). Blocks automated fetching (403); text verified through the city's own published legislation file above.
↗ DataSF — Terms of UseThe licence grant, and the reason this entry is distinctive among the US cities in the atlas. Carrying sentence: 'Except where otherwise stated in the file containing such Data or on the page from which such Data is accessed, including its metadata, Data is made available under the Public Domain Dedication and License v1.0 whose full text can be found at: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/'. The terms also bar users from attempting to re-identify individuals in the data. sf.gov returns an empty body to automated fetching; text verified through indexed search and corroborated at field level by the dataset metadata below.
Show 8 more sourcesShow fewer
↗ DataSF — dataset metadata API, Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to PresentPrimary licence and currency check, read 26 July 2026. Licence at field level: licenseId 'PDDL', licenseName 'Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License', termsLink 'http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/' — an actual open deed on the asset, not a terms-of-use pointer. Currency: rowsUpdatedAt 2026-07-26T14:48:45Z, 1,049,895 records through 25 July 2026, metadata stating data change frequency hourly and publishing frequency daily.
↗ Socrata Discovery API — DataSF catalogueScale figure, read 26 July 2026: resultSetSize 659 datasets. Counted with the same only=dataset filter used for the Chicago entry, so the two figures are directly comparable; the filter excludes charts, maps, filtered views and files. Every result sampled carried the PDDL licence string.
↗ DataSF — Dataset inventory (y8fp-fbf5)The accountability artefact, and what San Francisco publishes that the peer cities do not: the Chapter 22D inventory is itself an open dataset, with one row per departmental dataset carrying publishing_status, department, priority, date_published, update_frequency and days_since_data_update. Read 26 July 2026: data_updated_at 2026-07-26T02:12:31Z. The dataset's own description states it is 'collected in accordance with Chapter 22D of the Administrative Code'.
↗ DataSF inventory — publishing status counts (SODA aggregate query)Sentence-level source for every number in the impact field, read 26 July 2026: Published 696, Not Published 474, Internal 77, In Progress 51, Scoping 7, blank 3 — 1,308 records. The 696 'published' inventory records exceed the 659 live catalogue datasets; the two count different things (departmental publishing records versus current portal assets) and are reported separately rather than reconciled. The staleness figure comes from a second query on the same dataset: publishing_status='Published' plus days_since_data_update over 365 and update_frequency not historical returns 153.
↗ Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0What the licence actually grants, for readers comparing the atlas's licence positions: a dedication of the database to the public domain, with no attribution and no share-alike condition. This is the most permissive position of any city in the atlas — more permissive than Vienna's CC BY 4.0, and unlike New York (statutory ban on licence conditions but no deed shipped), Chicago (no deed, plus a notice condition on reusers), Jakarta (asserted public-domain status, no deed), Shanghai and Bangkok (no licence at all).
↗ City Administrator announces new leadership for San Francisco data and technology initiativesThe Chief Data Officer post exists and is filled: Soumya Kalra was named Chief Data Officer and began on 13 January 2025, overseeing DataSF's open data platform and citywide data standards. Directly relevant because Chicago's Inspector General found the equivalent post vacant for 18 months. sf.gov returns an empty body to automated fetching; verified through two independent search retrievals of this release.
↗ Committee on Information Technology (COIT) — presentation, 17 April 2025Currency, and a sign the portal is still the city's compliance vehicle rather than a legacy site: the presentation sets 18 July 2025 as the deadline for the CIO's initial publication of the AI inventory on the City's Open Data Portal, with a comprehensive inventory update due 18 January 2026. Kept as context; the entry makes no claim about whether those deadlines were met.
↗ Eviction in San Francisco — Parker ZieglerExample of downstream reuse, labelled honestly as an example and deliberately kept out of the impact field. The page credits its data to SF OpenData and the US Census Bureau; the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, active since 2013, works from the same Rent Board eviction-notice records published on the portal. The crediting sentence was read from the search index rather than a successful fetch. No source ranks the portal's usage, so no 'most used' claim is made.
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 9 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 9 addressable claims, 13 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 9

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-0bef497726574c94 quantitative
San Francisco's portal opened in 2009 under Mayor Newsom's Executive Directive 09-06
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The origin instrument, independently transcribed: dated 21 October 2009 and issued by Mayor Gavin Newsom, directing that 'All Department Heads or their designees shall strive to publish all datasets under their authority consistent with the DataSF authorization policy' and that 'All datasets determined to be accessible to the public now and in the future shall be made available through DataSF.org.'
Caveat
The directive names the portal but does not date its launch; 2009 is the date of the instrument.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, Executive Directive 09-06 (21 October 2009)
Claim 2 clm-4b1e513dff0a70a0 quantitative
A 2010 ordinance put the duty into Administrative Code Chapter 22D; a 2013 ordinance added a Chief Data Officer and department data coordinators
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The operative text published by the city itself makes the Chief Data Officer responsible for coordinating the portal and requires each department Data Coordinator to 'Prepare an Open Data plan for the Department'. The Sunlight record dates the 2013 strengthening.
Caveat
Ordinance numbers reported in secondary summaries of this chain — 293-10 for the 2010 codification, 69-13 passed 16 April 2013 — were not confirmed against the clerk's file, which is why the entry says 'a 2010 ordinance' and 'a 2013 ordinance' rather than citing numbers.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, 2013 revision to Chapter 22D (28 March 2013)
  2. City and County of San Francisco — open data legislation text (Chapter 22D), city GitHub repository
Claim 3 clm-8c22143f27d63803 quantitative
the data carries a recognised open licence, PDDL 1.0
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The terms of use carry the grant: 'Except where otherwise stated in the file containing such Data or on the page from which such Data is accessed, including its metadata, Data is made available under the Public Domain Dedication and License v1.0'. The dataset metadata API confirms it at field level — licenseId 'PDDL', licenseName 'Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License' — so the deed sits on the asset, not only in a terms-of-use pointer. PDDL dedicates the database to the public domain with no attribution and no share-alike condition.
Caveat
sf.gov returns an empty body to automated fetching; the terms text was verified through indexed search and corroborated at field level by the dataset metadata.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF — Terms of Use
  2. DataSF — dataset metadata API, Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to Present
  3. Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0
Claim 4 clm-71c8ef1667671d63 quantitative
the inventory Chapter 22D requires is itself published as a dataset
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The Chapter 22D inventory is published as an open dataset with one row per departmental dataset carrying publishing_status, department, priority, date_published, update_frequency and days_since_data_update. Its own description states it is 'collected in accordance with Chapter 22D of the Administrative Code'.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF — Dataset inventory (y8fp-fbf5)
Claim 5 clm-4b3a7c725c8f2172 quantitative
659 datasets in the portal catalogue, read 26 July 2026
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The catalogue API returned resultSetSize 659 on 26 July 2026, counted with the same only=dataset filter used for the Chicago entry so the two figures are directly comparable; the filter excludes charts, maps, filtered views and files. Every result sampled carried the PDDL licence string.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Socrata Discovery API — DataSF catalogue
Claim 6 clm-a15be65179adeae6 descriptive
police incident reports are republished daily and were current that day
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Read 26 July 2026: rowsUpdatedAt 2026-07-26T14:48:45Z, 1,049,895 records through 25 July 2026, with metadata stating a data change frequency of hourly and a publishing frequency of daily.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF — dataset metadata API, Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to Present
Claim 7 clm-510ec69f300c5d48 quantitative
of 1,308 inventoried datasets, 696 are marked published, 474 not published, 77 internal, 51 in progress and 7 in scoping
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
An aggregate query against the inventory dataset, read 26 July 2026, returned Published 696, Not Published 474, Internal 77, In Progress 51, Scoping 7 and blank 3 across 1,308 records.
Caveat
The 696 'published' inventory records exceed the 659 live catalogue datasets. The two count different things — departmental publishing records versus current portal assets — and are reported separately rather than reconciled.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF inventory — publishing status counts (SODA aggregate query)
Claim 8 clm-e1c4067f5de7caaf quantitative
153 published datasets that are not flagged historical had gone more than a year without a data update
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
A second query on the same dataset — publishing_status='Published', days_since_data_update over 365, update_frequency not historical — returned 153.
Caveat
Staleness measured from the city's own field days_since_data_update; a dataset may be stale because nothing changed rather than because it was abandoned.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF inventory — publishing status counts (SODA aggregate query)
Claim 9 clm-40381c6a6ba9e0e3 quantitative
San Francisco put the duty in the code and publishes the compliance record itself as a dataset — which is why anyone can count the 474 inventoried datasets that are still unpublished without asking the city
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The inventory Chapter 22D requires is itself an open dataset, refreshed 26 July 2026 (data_updated_at 2026-07-26T02:12:31Z), and an aggregate query on it returns the 474 records marked Not Published — the compliance record is public and countable without a records request.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. DataSF — Dataset inventory (y8fp-fbf5)
  2. DataSF inventory — publishing status counts (SODA aggregate query)
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 2026-08-22-cross-city-sourcing effective 2026-07-26 · created 2026-08-22

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

sha256:d62fe83b66fd3e5df4111e48157c4abd026e3fe3a34c3e2135d9b4d51c6f2be0
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
9
of 9 claims mapped
13
source dossiers
3
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
DataSF, Office of the Chief Data Officer, City Administrator's Office, City and County of San Francisco
Actor types
city-government
Funding model
public
Funding description
Not recorded
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

13 source dossiers

Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, Executive Directive 09-06 (21 October 2009) opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-2e0df05bb3f958fb
Publisher
Name not classified · opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2009-10-21
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The origin instrument, independently transcribed and analysed. Date: 'October 21, 2009', issued by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Carrying duties: 'All Department Heads or their designees shall strive to publish all datasets under their authority consistent with the DataSF authorization policy', with quarterly reviews of progress, and 'All datasets determined to be accessible to the public now and in the future shall be made available through DataSF.org.' The directive names the portal but does not date its launch.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
City and County of San Francisco — open data legislation text (Chapter 22D), city GitHub repository raw.githubusercontent.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-5ed0618c8b75e947
Publisher
Name not classified · raw.githubusercontent.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The operative text, published by the city itself. SEC. 22D.2(a) makes the Chief Data Officer responsible for coordinating the portal, assisting departments with compliance and analysing usage, and (a)(5) to 'Present an annual updated citywide implementation plan to COIT, the Mayor, and…' the Board. SEC. 22D.2(b)(3) requires each department Data Coordinator to 'Prepare an Open Data plan for the Department', including 'a summary description of all data sets under the control of each…' department and 'a timeline for the publication of the Department's open data'. This is the sentence-level basis for the inventory and publishing-plan machinery.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — San Francisco, CA, 2013 revision to Chapter 22D (28 March 2013) opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-24229ac3d9ec5a56
Publisher
Name not classified · opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2013-03-28
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The 2013 strengthening. Ordinance numbers reported in secondary summaries of this chain — Ordinance 293-10 (2010) codifying the policy as Administrative Code Chapter 22D, Ordinance 69-13 passed 16 April 2013 creating the Chief Data Officer and Department Data Coordinators — were not confirmed against the clerk's file, which is why the entry body says 'a 2010 ordinance' and 'a 2013 ordinance' rather than citing numbers.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
American Legal Publishing — San Francisco Administrative Code, Chapter 22D: Open Data Policy codelibrary.amlegal.com · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-0a2c25345a7fab30
Publisher
Name not classified · codelibrary.amlegal.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The codified chapter as it stands today, including SEC. 22D.2 (Chief Data Officer and City Departments) and SEC. 22D.3 (rules and technical standards). Blocks automated fetching (403); text verified through the city's own published legislation file above.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
DataSF — Terms of Use sf.gov · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-3a4b85af79c65c06
Publisher
Name not classified · sf.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The licence grant, and the reason this entry is distinctive among the US cities in the atlas. Carrying sentence: 'Except where otherwise stated in the file containing such Data or on the page from which such Data is accessed, including its metadata, Data is made available under the Public Domain Dedication and License v1.0 whose full text can be found at: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/'. The terms also bar users from attempting to re-identify individuals in the data. sf.gov returns an empty body to automated fetching; text verified through indexed search and corroborated at field level by the dataset metadata below.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
DataSF — dataset metadata API, Police Department Incident Reports: 2018 to Present data.sfgov.org · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-5f5a6515020f8f80
Publisher
Name not classified · data.sfgov.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Primary licence and currency check, read 26 July 2026. Licence at field level: licenseId 'PDDL', licenseName 'Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License', termsLink 'http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/' — an actual open deed on the asset, not a terms-of-use pointer. Currency: rowsUpdatedAt 2026-07-26T14:48:45Z, 1,049,895 records through 25 July 2026, metadata stating data change frequency hourly and publishing frequency daily.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Socrata Discovery API — DataSF catalogue api.us.socrata.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-3f12752d87339b50
Publisher
Name not classified · api.us.socrata.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Scale figure, read 26 July 2026: resultSetSize 659 datasets. Counted with the same only=dataset filter used for the Chicago entry, so the two figures are directly comparable; the filter excludes charts, maps, filtered views and files. Every result sampled carried the PDDL licence string.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
DataSF — Dataset inventory (y8fp-fbf5) data.sfgov.org · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-c5f01695f356eebc
Publisher
Name not classified · data.sfgov.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The accountability artefact, and what San Francisco publishes that the peer cities do not: the Chapter 22D inventory is itself an open dataset, with one row per departmental dataset carrying publishing_status, department, priority, date_published, update_frequency and days_since_data_update. Read 26 July 2026: data_updated_at 2026-07-26T02:12:31Z. The dataset's own description states it is 'collected in accordance with Chapter 22D of the Administrative Code'.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
DataSF inventory — publishing status counts (SODA aggregate query) data.sfgov.org · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-d9c17403d4ef0590
Publisher
Name not classified · data.sfgov.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Sentence-level source for every number in the impact field, read 26 July 2026: Published 696, Not Published 474, Internal 77, In Progress 51, Scoping 7, blank 3 — 1,308 records. The 696 'published' inventory records exceed the 659 live catalogue datasets; the two count different things (departmental publishing records versus current portal assets) and are reported separately rather than reconciled. The staleness figure comes from a second query on the same dataset: publishing_status='Published' plus days_since_data_update over 365 and update_frequency not historical returns 153.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0 opendatacommons.org · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-8ab4e9e94cf37d4e
Publisher
Name not classified · opendatacommons.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

What the licence actually grants, for readers comparing the atlas's licence positions: a dedication of the database to the public domain, with no attribution and no share-alike condition. This is the most permissive position of any city in the atlas — more permissive than Vienna's CC BY 4.0, and unlike New York (statutory ban on licence conditions but no deed shipped), Chicago (no deed, plus a notice condition on reusers), Jakarta (asserted public-domain status, no deed), Shanghai and Bangkok (no licence at all).

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
City Administrator announces new leadership for San Francisco data and technology initiatives sf.gov · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-dbea5844d0149b2e
Publisher
Name not classified · sf.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
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The Chief Data Officer post exists and is filled: Soumya Kalra was named Chief Data Officer and began on 13 January 2025, overseeing DataSF's open data platform and citywide data standards. Directly relevant because Chicago's Inspector General found the equivalent post vacant for 18 months. sf.gov returns an empty body to automated fetching; verified through two independent search retrievals of this release.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Committee on Information Technology (COIT) — presentation, 17 April 2025 media.api.sf.gov · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-ddbab2b6027fe63e
Publisher
Name not classified · media.api.sf.gov
Type / language
pdf · language not classified
Published
2025-04-17
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Currency, and a sign the portal is still the city's compliance vehicle rather than a legacy site: the presentation sets 18 July 2025 as the deadline for the CIO's initial publication of the AI inventory on the City's Open Data Portal, with a comprehensive inventory update due 18 January 2026. Kept as context; the entry makes no claim about whether those deadlines were met.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Eviction in San Francisco — Parker Ziegler parkerziegler.github.io · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-c77e98af179b0774
Publisher
Name not classified · parkerziegler.github.io
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Example of downstream reuse, labelled honestly as an example and deliberately kept out of the impact field. The page credits its data to SF OpenData and the US Census Bureau; the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, active since 2013, works from the same Rent Board eviction-notice records published on the portal. The crediting sentence was read from the search index rather than a successful fetch. No source ranks the portal's usage, so no 'most used' claim is made.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
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

🇺🇸 Chicago's Open Data Executive Order and Portal · Chicago The same duty, two instruments: Chicago's executive order stopped reporting in 2014; San Francisco's code publishes the inventory itself. 🇺🇸 NYC Open Data and the 2012 Open Data Law · New York City Two ways to be open: New York's law bans licence conditions and ships no deed, San Francisco ships PDDL 1.0 on the dataset metadata. 🇺🇸 NextMuni: Real-Time Muni Predictions & the Fight Over Who Owned Them · San Francisco The exception in the same city: transit predictions arrived only after a licensing fight, and SFMTA's own feed deed stays revocable.

Who may reuse the city's data?

Four portals, four rungs of the licence ladder. The interesting differences are legal, not technical: what a re-user is actually allowed to do, and whether the permission is written down at all.

ProjectSinceStatusOutcomeEvidenceRun byCostWho may reuse the data
DataSF and San Francisco's Open Data LawSan Francisco, 🇺🇸 2009 Live Ongoing Official City government not public A recorded public-domain dedication — anyone, for anything, in writing. The most generous rung of the ladder.
Montreal Open Data Portal & Digital Data CharterMontreal, 🇨🇦 2011 Live Ongoing Official City government not public One open licence across the whole catalogue, with no unlicensed remainder — the cleanest audited count in the atlas.
Toronto Open Data: CKAN portal under a bespoke municipal licenceToronto, 🇨🇦 2009 Live Ongoing Official City government not public A bespoke attribution licence exists — but most catalogue records never name it, so the permission is real and largely undeclared.
Shanghai Public Data Open Platform & SODA ContestShanghai, 🇨🇳 2012 Live Ongoing Official City government not public Downloadable in tiers, but no open licence anywhere: reuse rights are never granted in writing.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains📖 Open data📖 Urban data platform (UDP)📖 Building performance standard (BPS)
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “DataSF and San Francisco's Open Data Law” — San Francisco, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/sf-datasf/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.

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

🚩 Report an error · 🔔 Follow changes to this entry (RSS)

✉️ Get the next source-checked smart-city project in your inbox

One short email a week: the Landmark, one Insight, the new cities. No spam, one-click unsubscribe. About the newsletter · RSS