---
title: "Open civic data"
description: "Public-sector datasets, including many cities' public art registries, published for anyone to use, build on, and redistribute."
glossary: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary"
source: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/open-civic-data"
---

# Open civic data

> Public-sector datasets, including many cities' public art registries, published for anyone to use, build on, and redistribute.

Glossary: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary  
Source: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/open-civic-data

Public art inventories are among the most re-used cultural datasets cities
publish: they feed maps, guides, research, and tourism products the city could
never have built or budgeted itself. Publishing the registry turns a
spreadsheet into infrastructure. It runs the other way too: a public guide
that [reads the city's open data](https://www.civiccollection.com/collections-management) keeps its civic
geography current without a second data-entry job.

Quality beats format. The datasets that actually get built on have
coordinates that land on the artwork rather than the parking lot, photos
with rights cleared for reuse, artist names spelled the way artists spell
them, and, rarest of all, records that say when a work was removed. An
open dataset nobody trusts is just an open liability.

Related terms: [Cultural asset mapping](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/cultural-asset-mapping), [Collection management](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/collection-management), [Public art program](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/public-art-program)

## Mentioned in

- [From Open Data to a Living Guide](https://www.civiccollection.com/blog/from-open-data-to-a-living-guide)