The CHHS Open Data Portal seeks to spark innovation, promote research and economic opportunity, engage public participation in government, increase transparency, provide journalistic/media information, and inform policy decision making.
The portal provides access to data that can be easily retrieved, combined, downloaded, sorted, searched, analyzed, and visualized by diverse audiences that includes individuals, businesses, researchers, journalists, software developers, health processionals, and government. With many audiences in mind, the site offers a wealth of features and functionalities. A key selling point of the platform is the application programming interfaces (API) that allow application developers to automatically consume the most current CHHS data into their respective applications.
The Landing Page
The
landing page presents such high-level topic filters for Diseases and Conditions, Facilities and Services, Healthcare, Workforce, Environment, Demographics, as well as a specific area for Developers. Additionally, the large search bar at the top provides a powerful way to explore the data on the portal.
The Dataset Catalog
The portal includes an
easy-to-navigate catalog that includes an entry for each open dataset available on the portal. The catalog offers filtering by keyword, data type, and the various CHHS departments publishing to the site. A pull-down menu also allows for easy sorting of the datasets in the catalog.
Metadata
A comprehensive metadata schema provides rich, easy-to-understand documentation describing each dataset on the portal. Metadata are critical to delivering the meaning of the data on the portal to consumers of these data. Scroll down the page to “Additional Info” when viewing a dataset to access the metadata.
Developer Resources
The
CKAN User Guide offers tools and facilities that include API documentation, libraries, as well as more specific resources targeting app developers and data publishers.
Open Data Handbook
The CHHS Open Data Handbook is a tremendous resource that includes an introduction to open data and the data portal, governance policies, a glossary of open data terminology and technologies, as well as open data tools and related government data portals.
The CHHS Open Data Program welcomes questions, comments, and suggestions at opendata@chhs.ca.gov.
