Welcome to the Virginia Open Data Portal!
The Virginia Open Data Portal is the official Commonwealth of Virginia platform for publicly accessible open data published by state agencies, localities, and other Commonwealth organizations. This data can be viewed, analyzed, visualized, and exported all on one platform.
This page answers common questions on what data assets are available, searching for information, and using the data. Don't forget to check out the additional resources at the bottom of the page.
What is Open Data?
Open data refers to information that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed by anyone. It is readable by a computer so that it can be filtered, sorted, manipulated and downloaded for use.
As a public resource, open data offers economic, performance, and social value :
* Offers organizations a way to better understand potential markets and integrate government data into new, more innovative products and services,
* Increases government transparency and accountability to its citizens, and
* Improves the quality and efficiency of government services by allowing citizens and policy makers to make more informed data-driven decisions.
It is important to note that open data does not include Protected Health Information (PHI) or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that is protected by law, such as a social security numbers, driver license numbers, or medical information.
What Data is Available on the Virginia Open Data Portal?
There are several types of data assets discoverable on the ODP. These are the most common:
- Dataset : an organized collection of data. The most basic representation of a dataset is data elements presented in tabular form with columns and rows. Datasets on the ODP are displayed in a grid or table view, similar to a spreadsheet. Each dataset includes a Primer page, the dataset's landing page which provides information about the dataset such as date created, last updated date and a data snapshot. The Primer helps a user decide if this dataset will meet their needs.
- Filtered View : a version of an original dataset in which the data has been filtered, sorted or grouped and then saved as a new view. The original data has not been edited or changed.
- Visualization : graphical assets including charts, maps and data lens pages. They offer a visual way to interact with data and are linked back to the original dataset.
- Stories : platform webpages that provide context to data. Stories may contain text, visualizations, images and links.
How can Citizens engage with the Virginia Open Data Portal?
The Virginia Open Data portal is open and available to anyone. Citizens can engage with the portal by:
- Viewing and exporting data
- Connecting to data via APIs
- Suggesting a dataset to the ODGA team via the contact page on the Open Data Portal.
Learn more about how to navigate through the portal here.
How to search for data:
- Browse by featured or popular datasets: The most popular or featured data assets are provided on the home page for browsing.
- Search: Enter key words in the search bar on the home page. Data asset titles, descriptions and tags are great things to include in your search.
- Groups: You can also browse under Groups at the bottom of the home page. The "groups" section provides multiple categories of data. For example, if you are looking for a transportation dataset, click the transportation icon under "groups." You will be directed to a page where all the datasets related to transportation are listed.
- Use the Catalog : Click on the Datasets link in the navigation bar at the top of the home page. Here you can filter by category, publishing organization, tags, formats, and licenses. You can also sort the results to find the most popular, most recently updated assets or most recently added assets.
- Organization : Click on the Organizations link in the navigation bar at the top of the home page. You will be directed to a list of organizations where you will be able to navigate to which specific organization related datasets you are looking for. Once you click on a certain organization, you will be direct to a list of all the datasets under that organization. If you are looking for datasets by Commonwealth of Virginia agency or locality, this is the best place to look.