Open Data Week 2025: Where Does Open Data Go From Here?

Members of Metagov community reflect on Open Data Week 2025

In late March 2025, several Metagov members participated in this year's New York City Open Data Week, an annual festival organized by the public interest technology organization BetaNYC, The New York City Office of Technology and Innovation (NYC OTI), and Data through Design (DxD) that celebrates the passing of NYC’s Open Data Law in 2012. NYC Open Data Week continues to push the boundaries of how technology can foster democratic participation and urban community-building. Nick and Ian both organized sessions at the NYC School of Data, an annual community conference that caps off Open Data Week, hosted at CUNY School of Law. This year’s was sold out, with a record-setting 662 registrants and 564 in-person attendees. The gathering brought together local politicians, public servants, community activists, technologists, and researchers to explore the transformative potential of open data. Opening remarks by Jazzy Smith, BetaNYC’s Chief of Staff, centered on the importance of understanding open data and civic technologies in terms of diversity, equity, and justice, and the centrality that local organizing and civic engagement will play in building the future we want to see. Read their testimonials here:

Nick Kaufmann

I work for InCitu as Community Manager, and outside of work I’m a member of Metagov and explore topics at the edge of civictech, immersive media, and urban design. For Open Data Week on behalf of inCitu, I partnered with zoning data startup zlvas to lead a workshop that reimagined how urban planning data can be experienced.

Collaborating with Pablo Sepulveda from zlvas, we created an immersive exploration of New York City's complex zoning regulations. The workshop addressed a critical challenge: most open data remains inaccessible to the average citizen. Zoning codes typically involve five to six intricate layers that determine what can be built in specific urban locations.

Our solution was to leverage augmented reality and hands-on modeling to transform abstract data into tangible urban experiences. Participants engaged in a hands-on process that began with an introduction to New York City zoning basics. They then created physical paper models of potential urban developments, using the constraints of actual city lots.

The exciting culmination was using augmented reality to visualize these models in real street contexts, allowing participants to see their ideas come to life at full urban scale. This approach directly confronts the problem of "open washing" - publishing data that remains functionally incomprehensible to most people. By bringing data into the public realm, we hope to create opportunities for more democratic, impactful conversations about urban development, making complex information accessible and engaging.

Ian G. Williams

I am a social worker and a public interest technologist currently enrolled in the PhD program in Social Welfare at The CUNY Graduate Center, and I have been a member of Metagov since late 2022. My scholarship examines technology adoption and innovation diffusion in human services organizations and public sector institutions. I work to expand digital inclusion and literacy while unsettling commonly accepted narratives that technology access alone can achieve social inclusion, equity, and justice. I am committed to challenging naive instrumentalism and techno-solutionism in policy and practice, and collaborating with technologists and data scientists to take more holistic views of social problems. More recently I have been examining the intersection of urban governance and data infrastructures in New York City as part of a fellowship on public scholarship. At NYC School of Data, I was part of two sessions: a panel on activism and affordable housing data, and a visioning workshop with the CUNY Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab.

On Squatter Data, Affordable Housing Activism, and History

Screenshot from a 1991 episode of WNYC’s New York Hotline, about homesteaders and squatters in the Bronx. Source: NYC Department of Records and Information Services.

I gave a talk, “The Data Politics of Squatter Legislation in New York City: Situating Urban Squatting and Homesteading Beyond Criminalization and Property Regimes” as part of the panel “Defending Affordable and Stable Housing: Progress and Problems” (with Sam O’Hana and Holden Taylor). New York City remains in a perpetual affordable housing crisis that has lasted for over 80 years. Our panel discussed affordable housing from perspectives informed by our research and lived experiences; Holden discussed tenant unionism in Brooklyn and his research on the financialization of housing. Sam discussed his use of open data tools and resources in his own legal dispute with his landlord, connecting his lived experience to his research on how NYC was a central site for the New American Poets movement, and what policies supported this.

My talk grew out of a question of how squatting appears, or does not, in open data infrastructures. I examined a bill currently under consideration by the NYC City Council that seeks to gather data about squatting. If passed, it would mandate that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) publish a quarterly report on squatter activity linked to real addresses that aggregates open data from multiple city agencies.

Screenshot from New York City Council’s Legislative Research Center

The talk unpacked how seemingly banal data objects like government reports and data dashboards are constructed and manipulated to support specific political narratives and policy agendas. Although it can often be framed as neutral and objective, data is partial and shaped by the politics and contexts of its creation. When data reveals something, it often obscures something else. In the case of squatting, a report counting squatter activities linked to known addresses is a selective view, shaped by ideological construction of squatting as a crime, which obscures broader historical contexts and the lived experiences of people who live in informal dwellings.

Understanding squatting, and creating policies that might address the underlying causes of housing scarcity, requires context, including what might motivate people to seek and make informal housing (including encampments and other forms of dwelling): the longer history of property regimes that construct ‘squatter’ as a distinct entity in the legal codes, obscured ownership records of properties deeded to corporations, and potential housing code violations and illegal conversions of single family homes that often lead to more informal and precarious housing arrangements.

Accounting for the wider story also means grappling with the intensified financialization of single family housing post-Great Recession, the housing scarcity intensified by the end of COVID-19 eviction moratoriums, the increased use of digital technologies to intensify gentrification and housing displacement, and the rhetorical framing of “small landlords” in a 2024 moral panic that led to a slew of anti-squatter state laws undermining tenant rights to the benefit of multinational investment and private equity firms. A dashboard constructing and visualizing squatting as a criminal activity to be controlled and stamped out does not encompass any of this. How can we widen the context and frame of reference for the digital tools used to understand squatting through other lenses?

Images of Freetown Christiania and AKC Metelkova. Source: Author.

Squatting, slums, and ‘informal’ dwelling is a global phenomenon that the UN estimates over 1 billion people experience every day. In Europe, well-known squats such as Freetown Christiania and AKC Metelkova (see photos above) offer living examples of self-managed, autonomous communities that have a more explicit politics aimed at alternative claims to land tenure. Much of informal housing is necessity-driven; it is self-help by and for people experiencing housing deprivation. Criminalization is one, but not the only response to squatting; the world is rife with examples of responses that include tolerance and regulation. In the United States, squatting remains an under-examined and contentious issue, yet New York City has a rich history of squatting and informal housing that often follows cycles of urban disinvestment and housing crises.

Histories of squatting and affordable housing activism, and the lived experiences of un(der)housed persons, are often left out of policy-making processes. Important sources of data exist through archives and oral histories; in New York City those include the NYC Department of Records and Information Services, The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), The Squatters Collective Oral Histories Project at NYU Tamiment Library, and the Picture The Homeless Oral History Project. Elsewhere, models of data activism such as the This is Not An Atlas counter-mapping project, which used data science and geography to reconstruct an interactive map of squats in Berlin, give examples of alternative ways of framing squatting through digital artifacts and dashboards. I ended by asking what data dashboards on squatting and informal housing in NYC that incorporate the rich stories and qualitative data look like. One recent and promising example is the Housing Justice Oral History Project map.

Envisioning Public Interest Technology Labs

I also helped organize a participatory visioning workshop led by The CUNY Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab (with Rev. Dr. Katie Cumiskey, Dr. Effie MacLaughlan, Dr. Raj Korpan, Anthoni Garcia, and Afsana Siddika) which further emphasized the situated and community-based nature of data work and public interest technology through envisioning sites for open urban innovation. Public interest technology, an emergent field, “refers to the study and implementation of technology expertise to advance the public interest, generate public benefits, and promote social good.” The CUNY PIT Lab, originally housed at the College of Staten Island as part of the larger PIT @ CUNY initiative, recently relocated to The CUNY Graduate Center for its next phase.

The workshop aimed to solicit input and interest among participants for the Lab, inviting them to co-create its future. Through an interactive game inspired by the Guidelines for Urban Labs kit developed by Maastricht University’s URB@Exp project and Catherine Hammel’s Collaborative Maps of Curiosity workshops, participants were challenged to work in teams and imagine iterations of the CUNY PIT Lab’s planned pop-up workshop in Fall 2025, which will showcase its partnership project with BetaNYC funded through a PIT-UN Network Challenge Grant from the New America Foundation. The grant supports expanding BetaNYC’s Civic Innovation Fellows Program, which trains CUNY undergraduate students in PIT apprenticeships, and also supports work to establish PIT credentials. At CUNY, this work fits into the larger goals of its partnership with the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline.

Our game consisted of a brief overview of the CUNY PIT Lab, followed by a structured design sprint where participants broke out into teams to imagine a “next level” challenge for the PIT Lab, through four components: Values and Stakeholders, Key Focus Areas, Signature Programs, and Physical/Digital Space. After thinking through these components, the teams faced the “Die of Destiny” - a randomized challenge scenario (read by Raj’s robot collaborator, Misty) which created hurdles for the teams, such as a foundational technology failing or a surge in demand for the lab’s services. The workshop was observed by a panel of PIT experts who gave feedback on the team proposals, helping synthesize the ideas and concepts generated through the workshop. The panel observed how enthused and creative the visions were, and despite being at the end of a long day, the energy levels remained high and participants highly engaged.

The workshop encouraged participants to think critically about technological innovation and its social implications while applying the concepts they learned earlier in Open Data Week, creating a dynamic exploration of how technology intersects with community needs and core values, and how uncertainty and constraints create new opportunities for creative adaptation. The CUNY PIT Lab looks forward to incorporating the feedback and excitement of participants into the PIT pop-up, and to facilitating more of these workshops over the summer.

The Future of Open Data

Reflecting on the event, we both concluded that open data's potential goes far beyond simple information sharing. New York City remains a model for open data legislation, with one of the strongest open data laws in the United States and a thriving, globally linked technology ecosystem. NYC School of Data offers a window into how people from many backgrounds can learn and engage meaningfully with open data. However, the real work lies in continuous implementation, maintenance, and community building in and around digital infrastructures. The most powerful insights emerged from understanding open data as more than a technology. It's a collaborative and social process that requires ongoing education, critical examination, and a commitment to making information truly accessible and meaningful to diverse communities. Want to get involved? Check out these opportunities:

• Take a look at NYC Open Data - https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/

• Explore Beta NYC (www.betanyc.org) and their tools

• Attend open data literacy workshops https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/learn-open-data/

• Learn more about public interest technology and its core values - https://compitencies.org/

• Consider volunteering for next year's School of Data event

Metagov continues to be committed to exploring how technology can serve community needs, challenge existing power structures, and create more transparent, accessible urban systems.