As part of the City’s overall goal of becoming a leading digital city, beginning in August 2012, Palo Alto is implementing an open data initiative. The goal is to increase public access to the City’s data in an effort that supports government transparency, openness and innovation.   Initially, the City will publish various data sets on its website in a variety of formats to allow for the ability to view, search, sort, filter download or build applications with the data. The City will identify additional sets of data and publish them as they become available. From time to time, the City will issue a challenge and ask people to build solutions for certain data that will help the city with its goals. Here are some the key activities and events leading up to the City’s open data initiative.