Our Mission

To empower the use of data in decision making and service delivery.

How We Can Help

Services for City Departments

Data Sharing

Make timely data available for use

Open data publishing provides access to a governed, shared platform for the easy sharing of data. During the publishing process, departments gain access to a suite of services: data transformations, automation services, and handling of sensitive or protected data.

Submit a dataset to share
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Dashboarding

Tell stories, support decisions with data

DashboardSF is a collection of support services designed to help departments use PowerBI to automate manual reporting and create reports that lead to service change. PowerBI is an enterprise data wrangling, reporting, and visualization tool available to CCSF analysts.

Sign up for Intro to PowerBI
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Data Science

Bring advanced stats & models to service changes

DataScienceSF brings the power of advanced analytics and applied statistics to assist the work of the departments in changing services. It aims to help departments achieve more with their existing resources and processes. This service from DataSF is offered through a project solictation process.

Learn more and submit an application
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Who we are

This is the core team that work on DataSF programs, services and initiatives related to data sharing, data analytics and data science.

Michelle Littlefield, Chief Data Officer

Michelle Littlefield's picture

Michelle Littlefield is the Chief Data Officer for the City and County of San Francisco, where she leads the City’s data strategy and expansion of the City’s analytics ecosystem. Michelle brings 10 years of experience leading and building analytics capabilities and driving digital transformation in local government. She served as the Data & Analytics Manager for SF Planning where she focused on establishing consistent data governance standards, increasing GIS capabilities, and expanding the department’s Data & Analytics team. Prior to this role, Michelle served as the Digital Services & Analytics Program Lead for Redwood City and co-founder of the Code for America Brigade for San Mateo County. Michelle earned Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Urban Studies & Planning from UC San Diego, completed her Executive Leadership Program at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and is pursuing an M.S. in Applied and Computational Mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University. She’s passionate about connected urban systems and serves as an advisor on smart cities and urban analytics at various academic institutions and organizations.

Cody Xuereb, Analytics Strategist

Cody Xuereb's picture

Cody Xuereb is the Analytics Strategist at DataSF. Cody joins DataSF with a decade of experience leading and managing analytics and evaluation projects for public sector agencies and a passion for using data to inform decision-making. Prior to joining DataSF, Cody worked as a Principal Analyst for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Budget & Legislative Analyst/ Harvey M. Rose Associates. He also set up and managed the Research & Planning Unit at the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department, which was responsible for advising the Department on performance and legislative changes. Besides his experience in San Francisco, Cody spent six years in the United Kingdom, where he worked as an economist for the British Government, including in the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit, analyzing and advising on the implementation of national policies. He has also worked as a research associate at the London School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley. Cody holds a Master of Science degree in Public Policy from University College London and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Tonkovich, Data Program Manager

Dan Tonkovich's picture

Dan Tonkovich is the Data Program Manager at DataSF. Before working for the City, Dan spent the last decade as an analyst, product manager and analytics manager at various finance and technology companies. His primary focus was using data to build and improve consumer-facing products. When not working, Dan bikes around SF, stopping a lot for snacks. He holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from Tulane University.

Tania Jogesh, Senior Data Scientist

Tania Jogesh's picture

Tania Jogesh is the Senior Data Scientist at DataSF. Tania comes to DataSF with more than a decade of data-driven research experience, an unconventional background in pollination ecology, and a desire to improve the world with data. She holds a PhD in Entomology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Statistics from Carleton University, Canada. Prior to her current position, Tania was a postdoctoral scientist with the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she applied advanced statistical methods to understand plant and insect communities in natural ecosystems.

Helen McLendon, Senior Analytics Engineer

Helen McLendon's picture

Helen McLendon is the Senior Analytics Engineer at DataSF. She comes to the City with a background in computational neuroscience, experience developing healthcare software, and a zeal for building well-structured, meaningful datasets. She received her Bachelor's degree in Biology from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCSF where she studied the neuronal mechanisms underlying auditory perception in songbirds. Prior to joining the DataSF team, Helen spent 5 years at a Medicare Advantage startup, serving in numerous roles including Data Scientist, Operations Manager, and Data Engineer. She is passionate about creating trusted systems that empower users to make data-driven decisions.

Matthew Smith, Analytics Engineer

Matthew Smith's picture

Matthew Smith is an Analytics Engineer at DataSF. A Bay Area local, Matt began working for the City after receiving his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. First beginning as a data engineer at San Francisco International Airport, Matt spent 2 1/2 years working for the Department of Public Health on the City's COVID-19 response. He built the daily process that brings in vaccination data from the state's registry, and managed the data pipelines that populate the open data portal datasets for COVID and mpox. In his free time, Matt enjoys long bike rides, the produce section at Berkeley Bowl, and independent movie theaters.

Who we are thankful for

These are the people that help us along the way.

Data Coordinators

Our data coordinators are responsible for coordinating the implementation of the open data work in their departments. Without their department knowledge and help, SF OpenData would not be possible.

Department of Technology

The Department of Technology supports us in developing and maintaining data pipelines for open data sharing and as partners on data architecture and infrastructure. A special acknowledgement to SFGIS within the department. SFGIS staff have been long-standing partners and champions for open data, providing support and expertise on automating data pipelines among other things.

Controller’s Citywide Services Auditor (CSA)

We’ve partnered with the performance team in CSA on a variety of projects, including the Data Academy, Stat program research, and internal data sharing.

Previous DataSF Staff

The wonderful team members that shaped DataSF's work to date.

  • Blake Valenta. Our first analytics strategist. Helped launch DataScienceSF and helped the city adopt PowerBI.
  • Jason Lally. The City's second Chief Data Officer. Led and guided the team starting in 2018 through 2020.
  • Joy Bonaguro. The City's first Chief Data Officer. Established, grew and guided the team on its initial journey starting in 2014.
  • Kimberly Hicks. Our first data scientist. Kim delivered our first major successes in our DataScienceSF program.
  • Janine Heiser. Our first data engineer. She established the initial data infrastructure for making timely data available on the open data portal.
  • Erica Finkle. Our privacy extraordinaire. Erica laid the groundwork for the ShareSF inititative and is responsible for our Open Data Release toolkit.

Awesome Interns

We’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing people on a short term basis. Their efforts have been key to moving some of our projects forward.

  • Charlie Moffett, Summer 2017. Charlie did the foundation research for what became the Ethics and Algorithm toolkit.
  • Sam Dorward, Fall 2015-Spring 2016. Sam joined us as part of an externship through Bain Consulting and knocked it out of the park conducting analytics work on tax compliance, fire inspections and evictions and created Advanced Excel for Data Academy.
  • Christina Malamut, Summer 2015. Christina joined us to help us research what it would take to improve public records requests in San Francisco, individual access to private data, and data about homelessness.
  • Laura Gerhardt, Spring 2015. Laura joined us as part of completing her Master’s in Public Policy at UC Berkeley. She researched and assessed how to best realize the value in housing inspections data across three City departments.
  • Charlotte Hill, Dan Wilcox, Evgenia Likhovtseva, and Marcelo Milanello, Spring 2015. As part of a client class project, this graduate team at UC Berkeley investigated options for data or technology partnerships with external groups.
  • Erica Finkle, Summer 2014. Erica joined us in Summer 2014 and provided the core research and basis for our project on streamlined internal data sharing. In a few short weeks, she reviewed and summarized the privacy laws facing SF, reviewed best practices in other jurisdictions, and provided a set of recommendations. Her work was put to immediate use and accelerated our learning curve.
  • Peri Weisberg, Summer 2014. Peri joined us in Summer 2014 and hit the ground running by informing the data categories on SF OpenData, helping us identify the best data licensing approach, and surveying metadata practices. Her core project was creating an evaluation framework for our open data program - something that had not been created to date. Most of her work is available on our resources page.