City halls across the country are leveraging open government data to become more transparent, accountable, and participatory. Here at Sunlight we believe that open cities are better equipped to take on challenges, collaborate with community members, and ultimately improve the lives of everyone. Cities are already doing this work in exciting ways. The City of Syracuse, New York is posting the results of water quality tests while its reservoir experiences a record algae bloom. And the City of Madison, Wisconsin has built an interactive map to help residents understand the city’s 2018 capital budget. These are only some of the latest projects cities are doing with open data.

Understanding how to use open data to solve communities problems is not easy, though. There are technical challenges as well as bureaucratic ones, and navigating community priorities is never a short or simple process. But many cities are making progress: listening to and learning from residents, connecting those concerns with civic information assets, and leveraging open data for impact.

Sunlight’s Open Cities team is launching a new newsletter dedicated to exploring these issues. From the nuts and bolts of publishing data online to how to formalize open data procedures and how to put it all into use, we’ll be sharing the ideas and resources designed for small- and mid-sized cities interested in making open data a bigger part of their toolkit.

To subscribe, enter your name and email in the box below (we will not share your information in any way). You’ll get an email from us about twice a month all about the intersection of open data and city government.

If there are subjects you want covered in the weeks ahead, send them our way. Email us at opencities@sunlightfoundation.com or on Twitter @SunFoundation.

We look forward to exploring these ideas together.