The City’s search-by-owner property record tool — the product of a hard-won open data victory back in 2015 — was recently removed from the City’s open property data on property.phila.gov, the Inquirerreported Tuesday.

The feature was a win for local civic technologists, who shepherded it from initial development at a hackathon during Philly Tech Week to implementation by the City, showing a path from project into public use. But now, City officials are citing safety concerns as they update systems — even as technologists continue to make the function available through other means.

The change came about last week. It comes as property.phila.gov is undergoing some changes, namely being replaced by a new property application in the coming months. But users searching for open data on property can no longer do so by simply searching an owner’s name. (This reporter’s attempts to search for a list of her landlord’s properties indeed proved fruitless.)

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE