SACRAMENTO – The California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) has launched its Open Data Portal, which facilitates user-friendly access to non-confidential data collected by CHHS departments.

The Open Data Portal’s goals are to spark innovation, promote research and economic opportunities, engage public participation in government, increase transparency, and inform decision-making.

“Open data” describes data that are freely available, machine-readable and formatted according to national technical standards to facilitate visibility and reuse of published data by individuals, business, researchers, journalists, developers and others.

“Transparency and accessibility to information is so important to democracy,” said Diana S. Dooley, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency. “This is the beginning of a very ambitious effort to open information portals that people want and need. This is an important step toward our goal of making California the healthiest state.”

The California Department of Public Health and the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development are the first departments to contribute data to the CHHS portal with other departments to follow. Participating departments will continue to add more datasets over time.

Data sets initially available include birth profiles, poverty rates, reports on asthma and West Nile virus, Health Professions Shortage Areas, utilization of specific medical procedures and hospital seismic compliance.

“The launch of the California Health and Human Services Agency data portal promises benefits for policymakers, consumers, the media and anyone else who wants to leverage health data to inform decision making,” said Andy Krackov, senior program officer at the California HealthCare Foundation, which is funding the Open Data Portal Project. “The California HealthCare Foundation looks forward to supporting the state’s work by encouraging use of the Portal and the creation of innovative tools to harness these data.”

Prior to its launch, CHHS tested the portal ( https://chhs.data.ca.gov/ ) with state partners, researchers, technology experts and members of the public.