Mayor President Edwards Announces 2025 Open Data Day, Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary of Open Data BR

BATON ROUGE, LA - Wednesday, March 27, 2025 - Mayor-President Sid Edwards announced today that his office will celebrate International Open Data Day and the 10th anniversary of the Open Data BR platform 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, March 29, at the Main Library. This will mark a decade of enhancing transparency, data-driven solutions, and efficiency across City-Parish operations.

"This year, we're excited to celebrate an important milestone for our City-Parish - 10 years of leading the way in government transparency and efficiency initiatives through Open Data BR," Mayor Edwards said. "Over the past decade, Baton Rouge has become a model for using open data to drive decision-making and operational efficiencies. We're proud to celebrate these achievements, and we stand firm in our commitment to leveraging data to enhance services and share information with our residents."

Top accomplishments for the Open Data BR initiative over the past decade include:

• Following the initial Open Data BR launch in 2015, the City-Parish launched Open Neighborhood BR in 2017, Open Checkbook BR in 2018 and Open Budget BR in 2021.
• For 10 consecutive years, Baton Rouge has been named a Top Ten Digital City by the Center for Digital Government, ranking third in 2024.
• In 2020, the City-Parish launched its Citizen Data Academy, which won the Results for America's Sharman Stein Award for Storytelling Changemakers and the Government Experience Award in 2022.
• In 2022, Baton Rouge was accepted into Bloomberg Philanthropies' inaugural City Data Alliance, focused on advanced uses of data in local government.
• In 2024, Baton Rouge earned a Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Gold Certification for establishing exceptional data capabilities.

Open Data Day will feature presentations, interactive workshops, networking opportunities, and giveaways. The event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. To register, visit brla.gov/opendataday/registration.