Michael Bloomberg is launching a $42 million program to increase the use of open data in mid-sized cities across the country.
The project announced Monday, called the What Works Cities initiative, would help 100 cities expand open data and make better use of it when crafting policy and their budgets.
The program is being run through the former New York City mayor’s charity organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies. It has invited more than 275 cities to apply that have a population between 100,000 and 1 million people. It will later whittle that number down to 100.