Help Desk Relaunch
The ‘Contact Us’ page on NYC Open Data takes you to our help desk, which is the best way for anyone to get in contact with the Open Data Team and the people that manage each dataset. Depending on the nature of their questions, users can expect to hear back one to two weeks after they submit their request. More complex requests – especially those involving the assessment of new datasets for publication – might take longer to fully resolve.
The best thing about Open Data is the conversations it sparks among the people that produce and use it – one that allows them to share with and learn from each other. Data being “open” is not just about it being available, but also the subject of active discussion. With this idea in mind, one of our focuses this year was updating the platform for our help desk, nyc.gov/askopendata. The intention of these updates was to make it easier for people using NYC data to ask questions about it and for the agencies that create this data to respond to those questions. The new layout is cleaner, easier to follow, and hosts our brand-new help desk form. Users have more concise options to choose from and can provide more detail, making it easier for agencies to answer them.
We also upgraded the help desk support we offer our Open Data Coordinators (ODCs). Improving last year’s semi-automated system, we provided new ways for ODCs to keep track of all of the questions they receive from the public. Previously, the majority of our public correspondence was painstakingly tracked via email between the Open Data Team and agency ODCs. Now, each agency has access to a personalized interface to manage their assigned inquiries, contact our team for assistance, or quickly respond to users via email.
Have a question about a dataset? Want to learn more about Open Data? Curious if there’s data on a NYC topic you’re interested in? Send us a note - we’d love to hear from you!