Enterprise Services - dataMontgomery

The dataMontgomery Domain provides support for increased public access to high value, non-sensitive, programmable ready Montgomery County Government datasets. Data is one of the most valuable assets for the County and the dataMontgomery Domain is the County Enterprise Strategy for publishing data to the public. It provides a central repository and standard set of tools where the public can go to retrieve published County Data Sets.

This Domain provides the following benefits:

  • Supports the County Mission Statement “A Responsive and Accountable County Government”
  • Keeps the public informed
  • Reduces publishing costs by providing a centralized mechanism and repository for publishing County data
  • Leverages private sector resources, initiative, and creativity for development of mobile and Web Applications that make use of the data
  • Can improve data quality through more people looking at the data
  • Can avoid the expense of some MPIA requests by already publishing the data
  • Provides a standard set of tools for updating and retrieving the data
  • Provides analytical functions that provide feedback on the value of the data
  • Is a cloud based solution that reduces the cost of providing data access via many departments and their systems
  • Provides a safe mechanism to share data by decoupling access from internal systems

Guiding principles for the domain are:

  • Complete - All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security, or privilege limitations.
  • Timely - Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
  • Non-discriminatory - Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
  • License-free – Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security, and privilege restrictions may be allowed.
  • Primary – Data is as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.
  • Accessible – Data is presented in a meaningful way.
  • Machine Processable – Data can be processed.
  • Non-proprietary – Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.

The Department of Technology Services has contracted with a 3 rd party cloud solution provider to support the County’s dataMontgomery site. The site called http://data.montgomerycountymd.gov will host the identified data sets. When a department has data to host they should contact the Department of Technology Services to start the process identified in the dataMontgomery Governance Document. That document lists the governance, the steps to publish, and all party responsibilities.

To support the domain DTS can use the Enterprise Service Bus (see Service Enabled Domain) to update data on the site via a recurring schedule. For one time uploads the data will be given to the DTS administrator and they will upload data to the site.

Policies/Procedures

  • dataMontgomery Data Governance Document
    • Includes governance body, guiding principles, responsibilities, approval process, risks, sign offs, etc
  • The Department Of Technology Services will centrally administer the dataMontgomery site
  • Office of Management and Budget – Administrative Procedure 6-7 Information Resources Security 
  • Office of Management and Budget – Administrative Procedure 8-2 HIPPA Compliance and Responsibilities 

Please email the DTS Enterprise Architect Mike Tarquinio at Michael.tarquinio@montgomerycountymd.gov for any changes or comments.