NYC OpenData Technical Standards Manual (TSM)

We at the City of New York want to continuously collaborate with you on our Open Data Policies, Technical Standards, and Guidelines. On March 7, 2012, the most progressive open government legislation in the country was enacted: Local Law 11. Achieving the goals of the law demands significant input from the community. For additional information, see our open government page on NYC.gov.

Getting around

There’s a lot of information in the TSM, so we broke it up into sections to make it easier to read and provide feedback on each topic:

There’s also a copy of Local Law 11 of 2012, which serves as the foundation for all of the information here.

You can use the navigation menu at the top of the page to find the same sections. At the bottom of each page, there are buttons to the previous and next sections. Finally, if you prefer, you can view and print the most recent official version.

Providing feedback

We want your feedback as we continuously improve our service, but please note that we do not allow complete anonymity. To make sure your ideas are clearly understood by others, please keep them on-topic and refrain from language that others might find offensive. (Be sure to see our terms of service, below.)

Here are some options for providing input to the TSM:

• Provide your comments at the bottom of each page. A free Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, or Google account is required.
• Use the "Suggest Changes" button near the bottom of each page to propose edits directly to the content of that page. A free Github account is required.
• Finally, you prefer to work with your own full copy of the TSM, fork our repository, make direct edits to the markdown and related files - or use an online tool like prose.io - and then issue a pull request. A free Github account is required.

Terms of Service

By using this site, you agree to comply with the NYC Social Media Customer Use Policy (“CUP”) and that your comments, edits or other content that you create that fails to comply with the CUP may be deleted or removed by the site administrators without further notice to you. The contents of this site, whether they originate with the City or with registered users, is intended to be freely accessible and available for the purposes of collaborating to develop the City’s open data policies and technical standards. No content appearing on this site, whether contributed by the City or by users, will be subject to copyright or other intellectual property protections. Only users who agree to these terms should register or use this site. If you have questions or concerns, please contact us.

More information

This site, along with the NYC OpenData portal, is managed by the NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications Advanced Technologies team. That’s a long way of saying we’re a bunch of people who are unlocking government data. Although it probably will be available, we can’t guarantee that this site is available at all times.

Special thanks to New York State Information Technology Services; we developed this site by leveraging (forking) the work done on the NYS Open Data Handbook. Additional thanks to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy who paved the way.