The Water Boards’ Office of Information Management and Analysis (OIMA) hosted a Data Innovation Challenge this spring. The event culminated on April 22, with presentation and judging of the entries.

The focus was on creating apps, visualizations, and other tools that can help better harness data that is currently available. Generally, state government projects and products fail to share; disseminate; or make use, to its potential, the large amount of data that the government itself maintains. One of the aims of this event was to create products that demonstrate the use of data beyond what is currently being done. Data from the Water Boards’ CEDEN, SMARTS and CIWQS databases (see below) was highlighted, but participants were not required to use that data in the challenge.

This event also kicked-off the first phase of the Water Boards’ Open Data Initiative, which includes making data from three systems available through an open data platform. Future phases will include adding additional datasets and the development of additional tools for enhanced data access, integration, and visualization.