
The Opportunity Project for Cities
Community tools, powered by local data
A new model for innovation
The Opportunity Project for Cities puts open data to work. We bring together governments, community leaders, and tech volunteers to address local challenges through the power of open data and community engagement.
During the program, cities create a series of customized digital tools that speak to residents’ most pressing needs. The Opportunity Project for Cities builds a culture of government transparency, accessibility, and responsiveness that strengthens trust with residents and lays the foundation for lasting cocreated innovation.

Inspired by the U.S. Census Bureau’s The Opportunity Project (TOP), The Opportunity Project for Cities' methodology is:
Cross-sectoral: Cities face increasingly complex challenges with ever-diminishing resources, and they cannot solve them alone. Our program empowers city governments to partner with community leaders and tech partners to tackle problems and create more effective solutions while simultaneously building trust with residents.
Community-driven: City residents and the local organizations that serve them understand problems best. Our program creates opportunities for communities to take the lead in civic problem-solving and cocreating solutions.
Open-source: Open data has the potential to address residents' pressing challenges, but local governments often need support to turn data into solutions. Our program helps local governments learn to work with technologists to build sustainable products using open and accessible data.
How we work
The Opportunity Project for Cities is executed in a series of 20-week collaborative design sprints that increase community voice in government decision-making and produce valuable tools that address community problems.
During the design sprint, teams:
Understand a problem through community research, interviewing residents and other stakeholders to better define the problem they seek to address
Prototype, test, and build a product that uses open data to solve the problem
Launch the product and ensure that it is widely accessible and able to be sustained long-term
Our work in action

The Opportunity Project for Cities sprint toolkit: a guide for community-driven innovation sprints in cities

The Opportunity Project for Cities: Lessons from Saint Paul and San José

San José (CA) and Saint Paul (MN) set new standard in building data-led housing solutions during COVID-19 pandemic
Testimonials
Partnering at the intersection of data and government
The Opportunity Project for Cities is made possible through a partnership between the Centre for Public Impact and Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation. The Opportunity Project for Cities is supported by the Knight Foundation. Technical expertise is provided through support from Google.org.



