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Feature request: Accept data contributions from city/county/state governments #1598

@ErieMeyer

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@ErieMeyer

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Not a problem with Analytics.USA.gov. But yes -- wasted taxpayer money. The topline data about visits, visitors, platforms, screen resolution etc. on Analytics.USA.gov has helped me save millions (tens of millions?) of dollars over my federal career. Being able to see what's being used, what's not being used, how it's being used, which devices and operating systems across Federal websites has helped me depreciate support and backwards compatibility efficiently and better serve taxpayers. For example, being able to set benchmarks like "we will support browsers with 1 percent or more users nationally in the last year" means that we can save funds when browser use drops below that level.

Right now, the lack of data for State, County, City and other municipalities leaves gaps in our data that means we could be overspending. Additionally, many jurisdictions now have open data laws and policies, and not being able to see that data rendered beautifully alongside other government data sources means we're missing the full picture. If New York City and Topeka Kansas could compare notes and see what's being used most and how, they could hopefully save even more money and recreate fewer wheels.

What solution would you like?

I would love Analytics.USA.gov to accept data contributions from all government jurisdictions. For example, if folks have a .gov domain, they could be eligible to publish analytics data here. This would likely require additional staffing for the Digital Analytics Program, an updated page with contribution instructions, and a blog post about the change.

You could even start with two or three pilot jurisdictions, like Los Angeles County or Washington, D.C..

What alternatives have you considered?

  1. Another jurisdiction launching their own service, one at a time. Other jurisdictions have launched and then sunset those services: https://technical.ly/civic-news/phila-gov-analytics/

  2. Civic hackers making a unified analytics project. The brilliant and now TTS @laurenancona did this here: https://github.com/laurenancona/unified-analytics

These two are valiant, but it makes more sense for this to be centralized.

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