With a workforce of over 30,000 people, and opportunities in more than 1,000 different job categories, the City of Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the United States and one of the largest employers in Southeastern Pennsylvania. As an employer, the City of Philadelphia operates through the guiding principles of service, integrity, respect, accountability, collaboration, diversity and inclusion. Through these principles, we strive to effectively deliver services, to resolve the challenges facing our city, and to make Philadelphia a place where all of our residents have the opportunity to reach their potential. 

The Office of Innovation & Technology (OIT) is the central IT department for the City of Philadelphia lead by the Chief Information Officer.  Its mission is to provide technology and services that enable City employees to do their work better, more efficiently, and unlock innovations to better serve the public. OIT oversees most major technology projects for the City of Philadelphia; manages the bulk of the  IT assets; enterprise security; networks and the City’s enterprise data center; and telecommunications. 

The City of Philadelphia has well established and successful programs for publishing open data, conducting innovative spatial analysis and creating tools that enable the public to reap the benefits of this work.  The City of Philadelphia has been a leader in the open data space. We’ve had landmark data releases (salaries, property assessments); established processes to fully document and refresh datasets (www.metadata.phila.gov); and made open data highly usable and integrated into online tools for the public (https://atlas.phila.gov, www.vacancymap.phila.gov).  Philadelphia’s open data governance is truly institutionalized, with sharing and publishing of enterprise and open data occurring daily to support key government tools and systems.

The role of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) is to expand upon these achievements to further the efficient collection, organization, and access to data – not just to technically adept analysts, but to policy makers, civil servants, and the public who need to easily find and draw actionable insights and knowledge from city open data. 

The CDO is a leadership position that will mentor and direct teams, oversee and develop new programs, devise and coordinate with multiple stakeholders the technical and organizational approaches to improve data management and data quality for an array of users and applications. The CDO is equal parts technologist, strategist, and steward of open and enterprise data sharing and quality.  

The CDO will:
•    Oversee open data inventory, release and publishing operations for the entire city and ensure the quality, metadata preparation, and where applicable or required by law, that privacy needs are met.
•    Oversee a comprehensive data management strategy to ensure consistency and standards for data collection, formats, hygiene, sharing, integrations and storage across city government
•    Increase the accessibility to data for analysis/analytics, reporting, and open data publishing
•    Manage the reliable and consistent creation of linkages and ETL workflows between databases and APIs to support the city’s technology enterprise and open government efforts
•    Lead efforts to improve data quality across city government  
•    Improve upon our enterprise authoritative data warehouse (Databridge) so that checks on data standards, hygiene, permissions/access and security become more automated and provide continuous improvement feedback loop to the data authors
•    Increase capacity to conduct analytics and analysis in support of the Mayor’s key initiatives and projects for the Chief Administrative Officer and Managing Director.
•    Advise departments, consultants, and a variety of stakeholders on strategies to integrate with and better utilize city enterprise authoritative data and open data

Essential Functions
 
1) Provide leadership for OIT teams and directors reporting up to the CDO including, but not limited to the Chief Geographic Information Officer (GIO) and Director of Database operations.  Leadership  involves active mentorship and efforts to support staff’s professional development, retention and team building. 

2) Establish a dedicated team/practice to manage enterprise ETLs and the publications of APIs. This practice will bring together the efforts of a number of different tools and staff currently operation. 

3) Oversee the expansion of data analysis and analytical products and services provided by OIT to support projects of the Chief Administrative Officer and the Mayor’s key initiatives.

4) Coordinate with the Chief Enterprise Architect’s team to establish standards for ETLs and APIs and  advise departments, project managers and consultants when developing requirements for IT projects requiring integrations to data systems. 

5) Establish a citywide strategy and governance model for all data – collection, hygiene, storage, management, and sharing for business intelligence, project/program performance tracking, and public/open data releases. 

6) Coordinate with the Chief Enterprise Architect and the Director of Database operations on all major data initiatives and efforts to reinforce data standards.

7) Work closely with the Chief Enterprise Architect, Chief Security Officer, Director of Database operations, and GIO to improve upon existing practices and implement new solutions to improve the overall quality of city data and protect sensitive information. 

8) Build relationships with department leadership and technical teams that are independent of Office of Innovation and Technology. 

9) Engage with the public, academia and researchers, business groups, civic tech organizations, and community groups through presentations, outreach and demonstrations of open government data, tools and services designed for public use benefit by OIT and City departments.

10) Develop methods to track, document and promote use cases for open data to demonstrate the value – both external and internal to city government.

11) Improve upon processes to document metadata and ETL workflows for all data published for authoritative enterprise use and as open data. 

12) Ensure high availability of the data via ETL operations, to and from the enterprise data warehouse,  that are critical to the function of multiple applications, department operations and the publicly available applications on phila.gov.

13) Manage the annual enterprise budgets for software, services and hardware needed to support enterprise data management operations.

14) Prepare annual performance, hiring and training plans and reports on accomplishments.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
Prior experience leading teams to manage multiple projects and collaborating across an array of business practices and missions.

Genuinely committed to public service and improving the operations of government.

Hands on experience with technology and understanding of solutions that support open data publishing, spatial and non-spatial data analysis, data management, and data architectures.  Even more important is hands-on experience confronting the challenges posed by data quality to analysis and formalizing ETL routines and the negative impacts posed by a lack of standardization, governance and poor data management. 

Excellent communication (written and verbal).

Experience in large-scale project planning and team(s) management (setting and meeting goals, setting timelines, updating mangers and team members on status, etc.).

Ability to create and maintain good working relationships and collaborations with an array of personality types and interests.

Five years of relevant professional experience required.  Baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university.  Master’s degree is preferred.   

Please provide a resume and include a cover letter that explains why you are passionate about this role and how your experiences and skill sets will enable you to be successful leader. 

Successful candidate must be a City resident within six months of hire.

The City of Philadelphia is an Equal Opportunity employer and does not permit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, marital status, source of income, familial status, genetic information or domestic or sexual violence victim status. If you believe you were discriminated against, call the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations at 215-686-4670 or send an email to pchr@ phila.gov. For more information, go to: Human Relations Website: http://www.phila.gov/humanrelations/Pages/default.aspx