The Opportunity Project

The Opportunity Project, developed by the White House, the Census Bureau at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “helps to empower people with technology, make government data more accessible and user-friendly, and facilitate cross-sector collaboration to build new digital solutions.”

The Opportunity Project uses agile methodology and collaborative technology development sprints to create new data-driven tools and applications, utilizing government data from a wide range of federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, among others, as well as data from state and local governments across the country. Examples of data-driven tools developed through the Opportunity Project include:

• The Affordable Housing Finder helps low income citizens with children find opportunities for affordable housing.

• Diversitydatakids.org features interactive story maps that provide visibility into the relative affordability of opportunity for children in U.S. metropolitan areas based on indicators including health, education, residential segregation, and more.

• Grants Intelligence, a tool developed by eCivis, uses federal data to help local, state, federal, and tribal governments navigate federal grants and maximize the return on investment of federal grant dollars.

While the Opportunity Project is working actively across the U.S. federal government, the Opportunity Project team also encourages local communities to replicate their model, noting that: “Anyone interested in transforming federal data into digital tools for the American people can adopt this process.”