In March I participated in a
hackathon for journalism and data in New Jersey. The following is a list of open data sources they provided us to aid us in our team projects.
Click below to jump to topic
APIs ///
Budget and Spending ///
Business and Finance ///
Campaign Finance ///
Census and Demographics ///
Crime and Corrections ///
City Open Data Repositories ///
Education ///
Elections ///
Disaster Relief ///
Environment, Pollution and Wildlife ///
Health ///
Housing and Real Estate ///
Human Services ///
Infrastructure ///
Labor ///
Legislature ///
Mapping and Shapefiles ///
Miscellaneous ///
Non-profits and Charities ///
Pensions ///
Transportation and Safety ///
Taxes ///
Veterans ///
Weather
APIs
— Sunlight Foundation
has seven APIs, including campaign finances and voting records [
editor’s note: Sunlight’s APIs power these apps, so don’t replicate anything already here, http://sunlightfoundation.com/projects/ ]
—
New Jersey Boundary Service API
—
U.S. Census API
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Facebook API
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Foursquare API
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Twitter API,
—
Untappd API
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Yelp API
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FDA API
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Parse.ly API
—
Bizyhood API
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Budget and spending
— The
latest Budget Data released in the state Data Portal.
—
NJ State Transparency Center has online query tools and PDF-based reports
— The latest
Port Authority payrolls (in 2014)
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Business and Finance
—
NJ Business Records Service has a form-based query that may require some scraping to access data
—
List of New Jersey banks, from the NJ Division of Banking and Insurance
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Financial Institution Statistics, from the Treasury Department, state-level data
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Insurance and Licensing, from NJ Division of Banking and Insurance
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Campaign finance
—
NJ ELEC’s campaign finance databases, with downloads of reports for some races and PDF filings for local elections
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Federal Election Commission data
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FEC-Scraper, Python library for handling FEC data
—
Fech, Ruby library for doing the same
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Census and Demographics
—
American Fact Finder, the main search tool for digging into the Census’ data sets.
—
Census Reporter, easy-to-use tool for journalists to find and visualize Census data
— Rutgers’
New Jersey Data Book, online source for many New Jersey demographic datasets, goes down to the municipality-level
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Crime and corrections
—
NJ State Police statistics on crime, gang activity and accidents. Data is mostly in PDF formats and would require some OCR and massaging to unlock
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FBI Uniform Crime Reports
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NJ Registered sex offender database, with query-based data retrieval
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NJ Department of Corrections inmate finder, with form-based queries
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Arrest-related deaths 2004-2014, from NJ Advance Media “Kenwin Garcia” project
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Juvenile Justice Commission data, weekly statistics since 2011 in PDFs
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City Open Data Repositories
—
Hoboken’s Open Data site
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Jersey City’s Official Data site
—
Jersey City Open Data portal, a searchable repository of Jersey City data
—
Newark Open Data portal
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Education
—
NJ Department of Education data, one stop shop for everything data in New Jersey
— NJDOE’s
Electronic Violence and Vandalism Reporting System, contains school weapons, fights, assault, bomb threats, bullying incidents, etc.
—
College Campus Safety and Security Data, from U.S. Department of Education, has data on alleged criminal offenses reported to campus security authorities and/or local law enforcement agencies.
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Elections
—
NJ Election Information and Results Archive, with historical returns mostly in PDF
Disaster relief
—
Federal Emergency Management data feeds and APIs
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FEMA flood maps
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Federal Procurement Data System
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Sandy Programs and Disbursement data on the state’s Data Portal
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Environment, pollution and wildlife
—
NJ Department of Environmental Protection’s Data Miner, with form-based data retrieval
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Contaminated brownfield remediation
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Air Quality data
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Wildlife, fishing and hunting information
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NJ Bear Hunt Data
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Farmland preservation
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Drought data
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Profile of New Jersey’s energy emissions, consumptions and alternative fuel use, from US Energy Information Administration
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Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program data, from the Environmental Protection Agency
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Health
—
State inspection report cards for hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities, may require some scraping.
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CMS Open Payments database & ProPublica’s
Dollars for Docs project, both contain data on money received by doctors from pharmaceutical companies.
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Data.Medicare.gov, has quality measure comparisons for nursing homes, hospitals, home health and physicians.
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New Jersey Prescription Drug Price Registry
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Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plan premium prices, down to the county-level
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FDA API, contains adverse reactions and recalls for drugs, devices and foods
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Patient data breaches in medical facilities
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Housing and Real Estate
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Building Permit data, monthly, also going back since 2000
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Foreclosure Statistics, from the State Division of Banking
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Zillow Real Estate Data
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Property Assessment records
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Human Services
—
Family Development, food stamp, child services data, along with WorkFirst New Jersey Program.
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FamilyCare Enrollment, enrollment data on the state’s FamilyCare Program.
— New Jersey Division of Addiction Services,
Substance Abuse Statistics
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Substance Abuse Treatment Reports, the state’s annual performance reports from substance abuse treatment centers
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Intoxicated Driving Program Reports, from the state’s Intoxicated Driving Program
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Epidemiological Reports, issued annually by NJ Dept. of Human Services
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Infrastructure
—
National Bridges inventory
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National Dams Directory
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Labor
—
NJ Department of Labor’s State Data Center
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State labor force estimates and unemployment data
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OSHA enforcement inspections
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Legislature
—
State legislature FTP, has bills, laws, votes and bill tracking information from the current and past sessions
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Mapping & Shapefiles
— The
NJ Geographic Information Network (NJGIN)
—
NJ Office of GIS
— State
Department of Environmental Protection GIS data
— State
Department of Transportation GIS data, includes roads and highways
— NJ Transit
rail GIS data and
bus GIS data
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Miscellaneous
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Professional licensing data, with form-based data retrieval queries
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Asbury Park Press’ Data Universe
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Society of Professional Journalists tool box with links to public records
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NJ DataBank, a repository of policy reports and data on various topics
— NJ
Child Care licensing data
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Nonprofits & charities
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Directory of registered New Jersey charities
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IRS master file of tax exempt organizations
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Pensions
—
Active and Retired State Pension Data
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Transportation and Safety
— State
Department of Transportation data, includes tons of transportation data, including downloads of raw accident databases, GIS data and roadway usage
— All of
Hudson County Public Transportation GIS data, courtesy of
@FakeGreenDress
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511 Traffic info with form-based data query that could be scraped
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NJ Transit Developer site (need to sign up with a free account) contains GTFS schedule data and rail advisory feeds
— Five months of
PATH ridership Turnstile data
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Federal Rail Administration data, includes railroad accident data, among other things
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Taxes
— State
Department of Community Affairs’ Property Tax data
— State
Department of Treasury tax data
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Property ownership records