1001 Smart Cities

Permanent project revision

Analyze Boston and the 2014 Open Data Executive Order

Revision 2026-08-20-claim-baseline · effective 2026-07-26

Superseded. A later revision exists: 2026-08-21-source-dates →

unreviewed

Created the first structured Evidence Passport with 9 claims and 11 source dossiers.

sha256:dd5752aabb026f9ea1093764a57ffb5f45ee1af482ba708b51b9deda6df3a23e
All revisions → Current entity page →

Change set

  • add /evidencePassport — Added claim-level evidence mapping and source dossiers.
  • add /revisionHistory — Established a permanent, hash-addressed baseline revision.
9
of 9 claims mapped
11
source dossiers
3
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Claims, one by one

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-c513f6bd739e0d67 quantitative
Boston's duty to publish rests on a mayoral order of 7 April 2014 and the administrative policy the CIO issued in July 2015 — no ordinance, and no reporting duty
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city publishes the order itself: on 7 April 2014 the mayor signed an executive order 'directing the creation of an Open Data policy'. The instrument that followed is classified by an independent transcription as an administrative policy, which places responsibility with one official — 'The City of Boston's Chief Information Officer (CIO) and whomever the CIO designates is responsible and manages this policy.' A councillor filed a draft open-data ordinance the same day, modelled on the codified duties in San Francisco, New York City and Philadelphia; no record of its adoption was found.
Caveat
That the ordinance was never enacted is recorded as an absence — the policy registry lists only the order and the 2015 policy for Boston. The entry says it was not enacted rather than that it was defeated.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — COB Executive Order, Open Data, 4-7-2014 (dataset)
  2. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — Boston, MA, Administrative Policy (30 July 2015)
  3. Sunlight Foundation — Boston: the tale of two open data policies (11 April 2014)
Claim 2 clm-9adfbe6a5d861cc8 quantitative
The CKAN portal that followed in April 2017 carries 232 datasets
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The catalogue's own search interface returns "count": 232, read 26 July 2026. The city dates the 'Official release of Analyze Boston' to April 2017, and the trade press records the move off a Socrata-powered portal to a CKAN platform delivered through OpenGov, with a beta in March 2017.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
  2. City of Boston — Open Data to Open Knowledge
  3. Route Fifty — Boston seeks a more tech-savvy audience with new open data platform (March 2017)
Claim 3 clm-c023a6bbb3c002ff quantitative
The policy names CC BY 4.0 as the default licence; the portal ships PDDL public-domain dedications instead
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The policy text is explicit — 'The default license for all City of Boston Open Data is the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license' — while the catalogue's licence facet returns 216 datasets under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication. A sampled record confirms it at field level: license_id 'odc-pddl'.
Caveat
The policy allows the divergence in its own next sentence — 'While this license is the default, other licenses may be used for specific data sets.' The gap is between the written default and near-universal practice, not a breach of the rule.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — Boston, MA, Administrative Policy (30 July 2015)
  2. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
Claim 4 clm-655f785c21a9e06c quantitative
232 datasets in the catalogue, read 26 July 2026, and current: 311 Service Requests was last modified 25 July 2026
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The portal's highest-traffic dataset was created 2017-01-10 and carries metadata_modified 2026-07-25, with the 2026 resource file itself modified the same day and annual files running back to 2011.
Caveat
The dataset is mid-migration: a '311 Service Requests — NEW SYSTEM' resource was created on 28 October 2025 alongside a transition guide, and new cases land in a differently structured dataset. Currency here means the old series is still being written to, not that one series covers the whole record.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
  2. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_show, 311 Service Requests
Claim 5 clm-d5b233c10bcd3e6b quantitative
216 datasets carry the Open Data Commons PDDL public-domain dedication, 14 carry none, 1 the share-alike ODbL
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The licence facet at dataset level returns odc-pddl 216, notspecified 14, odc-odbl 1. What the shipped licence grants is a dedication of the database to the public domain, with no attribution and no share-alike condition; the single ODbL dataset is the outlier in the other direction, carrying a share-alike condition the rest of the catalogue does not.
Caveat
The licence is carried per dataset in CKAN's license_id field and stated nowhere else — not on the portal home page and not in the policy. Reading it required the API rather than the published pages.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
  2. Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0
Claim 6 clm-7c6bb3e748bf3d13 quantitative
so 93% of the catalogue ships a more permissive licence than the rule requires
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
PDDL asks for neither attribution nor share-alike, where the policy's CC BY 4.0 default would require attribution reading 'City of Boston' and a link back to the source data. The share is the facet's 216 against a catalogue of 232.
Caveat
The percentage is the entry's own arithmetic on the facet counts. No source states it.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
  2. Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0
Claim 7 clm-4c78e799382ff82c descriptive
No open-data compliance report and no published dataset inventory were found; the policy sets no reporting cadence
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The only cadence language in the policy is that 'The CIO or the CIO's designee will regularly review the catalog…'; the independent analysis records no annual compliance reporting requirement and no enforcement mechanism. Three years after the policy, the programme page still lists as a goal to 'Inventory, catalog, and build out the City's first ever comprehensive data catalog' — the policy's Data Catalog restated as an aspiration.
Caveat
The first half is an absence and cannot be sourced directly; it records what a search of the city's own pages and the policy registry turned up, not a statement that none exists.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — Boston, MA, Administrative Policy (30 July 2015)
  2. City of Boston — Open Data to Open Knowledge
Claim 8 clm-be6f7da57e8cb25c descriptive
Read the API, not the policy page
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The portal's public face says only 'Analyze Boston is the City of Boston's open data hub. We invite you to explore our datasets, read about us, or see our tips for users.' It displays no dataset count, no licence statement and no link to the open data policy. Every figure in this entry — the count, the licence split, the last-modified date — came from the catalogue's API instead.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Analyze Boston — portal home page
  2. Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet
Claim 9 clm-d43ba8b77ffe9468 descriptive
The policy also sets no reporting duty, so there is nothing to audit in either direction
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The policy gives the CIO a catalogue duty — 'The Chief Information Officer and the CIO's designee shall establish and maintain a Data Catalog' — but the independent analysis finds no annual compliance reporting requirement and no enforcement mechanism attached to it.
Caveat
The second half is the entry's own conclusion from the policy text, not a finding a source states.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — Boston, MA, Administrative Policy (30 July 2015)

Source dossiers and revision state

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-claim-baseline effective 2026-07-26 · created 2026-08-21

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

sha256:dd5752aabb026f9ea1093764a57ffb5f45ee1af482ba708b51b9deda6df3a23e
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
9
of 9 claims mapped
11
source dossiers
3
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
City of Boston — Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT), with the Analytics Team
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

11 source dossiers

Analyze Boston — CKAN package_search, licence facet data.boston.gov · 6 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-f1800c084a65aaf0
Publisher
Name not classified · data.boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Primary scale and licence evidence, read 26 July 2026. Total: "count": 232. Licence facet at dataset level: odc-pddl "Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)" 216; notspecified "License not specified" 14; odc-odbl "Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL)" 1. Read through CKAN rather than the portal's marketing pages, because the licence is carried per dataset in the license_id field and is stated nowhere else. A sampled record confirms it at field level: license_id "odc-pddl", license_url "http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/odc-pddl".

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Analyze Boston — CKAN package_show, 311 Service Requests data.boston.gov · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-31d91ccf574879eb
Publisher
Name not classified · data.boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Currency check on the portal's highest-traffic dataset, read 26 July 2026: metadata_created 2017-01-10, metadata_modified 2026-07-25, with the 2026 resource file itself modified 25 July 2026 and annual files back to 2011. licence odc-pddl. Also the source for the live migration: a "311 Service Requests — NEW SYSTEM" resource created 28 October 2025 alongside a "311 Service Requests Data Transition Guide" and a note titled "311 Technology Transformation Project and the Open Data Portal" — 311 is moving to a new backend and the new cases land in a differently structured dataset.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Sunlight Open Data Policy Hub — Boston, MA, Administrative Policy (30 July 2015) opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com · 4 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-682b2d316dcac4d7
Publisher
Name not classified · opendatapolicyhub.sunlightfoundation.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2015-07-30
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The instrument, independently transcribed and classified — as an administrative policy, not an ordinance. Sentence-level source for the licence divergence: "The default license for all City of Boston Open Data is the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license", with attribution reading "City of Boston" and a link back to the source data, and "While this license is the default, other licenses may be used for specific data sets." For responsibility: "The City of Boston's Chief Information Officer (CIO) and whomever the CIO designates is responsible and manages this policy." For the catalogue duty: "The Chief Information Officer and the CIO's designee shall establish and maintain a Data Catalog." And for the accountability gap: the only cadence language is "The CIO or the CIO's designee will regularly review the catalog…"; the analysis records no annual compliance reporting requirement and no enforcement mechanism.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Analyze Boston — Open and Protected Data Policy (dataset) data.boston.gov · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-c82a5674954c3727
Publisher
Name not classified · data.boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The policy as the city itself publishes it, on its own portal. Description: "Following April 7, 2014 Executive Order from Mayor Walsh, an Open and Protected Data Policy was drafted to guide the City in defining, protecting, and ultimately making Open Data available and useful to the public. The policy provides working definitions for Open Data, along with information on how it is to be published, reviewed, and licensed." Metadata created 11 December 2016, last modified 15 May 2019, licence odc-pddl. The PDF resource is a scanned image and cannot be machine-read, which is why the policy's operative sentences are quoted from the independent transcription above.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Background source; no baseline claim points here
Analyze Boston — COB Executive Order, Open Data, 4-7-2014 (dataset) data.boston.gov · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-178afb4626a7d9aa
Publisher
Name not classified · data.boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The originating order, published by the city on the portal it created. Description: "On April 7, 2014, Mayor Walsh signed an executive order directing the creation of an Open Data policy, pursuant with the City's goals toward Open Government. The Executive Order requires that the policy contain guidance on Open and Protected data classification, format, publishing, accessibility, and more." The order delegates: it tells the CIO to write a policy rather than imposing publication duties on departments directly. Also a scanned PDF.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Sunlight Foundation — Boston: the tale of two open data policies (11 April 2014) sunlightfoundation.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-834f2e48d02c3a83
Publisher
Name not classified · sunlightfoundation.com
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2014-04-11
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Why Boston has a policy and not a law. Councillor Michelle Wu filed a draft open-data ordinance on 7 April 2014 for introduction on 9 April, modelled on the codified duties in San Francisco, New York City and Philadelphia; Mayor Walsh signed his executive order the same day. No record of the ordinance being adopted was found, and the policy registry lists only the order and the 2015 administrative policy for Boston — so the entry says the ordinance was not enacted rather than that it was defeated. Wu became mayor in 2021.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
City of Boston — Open Data to Open Knowledge boston.gov · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-3634578d3b660058
Publisher
Name not classified · boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Operator and launch date from the city: the programme is run by the Department of Innovation and Technology, and the page dates the "Official release of Analyze Boston" to April 2017. Its stated goals include to "Inventory, catalog, and build out the City's first ever comprehensive data catalog" — the policy's Data Catalog restated as an aspiration three years later. The page carries no licence statement and no compliance or reporting commitment.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Route Fifty — Boston seeks a more tech-savvy audience with new open data platform (March 2017) route-fifty.com · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-453e76c5152d5056
Publisher
Name not classified · route-fifty.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

The platform switch, from trade press: Boston moved off its Socrata-powered portal to a CKAN-based platform delivered through OpenGov, reachable at data.boston.gov, with a beta in March 2017. CKAN rather than Socrata is what makes Boston's licence position directly checkable per dataset — the atlas's Chicago and San Francisco entries had to read Socrata's licenseId field instead. The vendor press release for the same launch claims the move merged the city's separate maps site into the portal; that claim is not repeated here, because the BostonMaps ArcGIS open-data site still exists alongside it, although geospatial datasets do appear inside CKAN under a "Boston Maps" organization.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Analyze Boston — portal home page data.boston.gov · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-741ea4a70ee86aa7
Publisher
Name not classified · data.boston.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
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Read 26 July 2026. The public face of the portal says only "Analyze Boston is the City of Boston's open data hub. We invite you to explore our datasets, read about us, or see our tips for users." It displays no dataset count, no licence statement and no link to the open data policy — the licence exists solely in per-dataset metadata. Basis for the entry's lesson.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Open Data Commons — Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0 opendatacommons.org · 2 linked claims

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
2026-08-21
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 shipped 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 places Boston alongside San Francisco at the most permissive end — and above its own written policy, whose CC BY 4.0 default would require attribution. The single ODbL dataset is the outlier in the other direction: ODbL carries a share-alike condition the rest of the catalogue does not.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Northeastern University — Building a 'thriving civic data ecosystem' in Boston (6 July 2017) news.northeastern.edu · background

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-e18072ff4e7775fb
Publisher
Name not classified · news.northeastern.edu
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2017-07-06
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-21
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Kept as context and deliberately not merged into this entry. The Boston Area Research Initiative is an inter-university partnership of Northeastern and Harvard, launched 2011, whose NSF-funded Boston Data Portal "harvests and publishes a variety of data related to Boston and its neighborhoods — from census and social media data, to city building records and 311 calls", hosted on Harvard Dataverse. It is a separate institution with its own platform and its own terms, and republishing cleaned research versions of municipal records is its own work, not the city's. It belongs in a separate entry if it belongs in the atlas at all.

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.