REDLANDS, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 7, 2016 — Esri took part in the Expanding Opportunity with Open Data: A White House Demonstration on March 7, 2016. The event showcased digital tools that help people advocate for resources in their communities through the ability to access neighborhood-level information about opportunities, such as jobs. Families, community organizers, nonprofits, local leaders, and the media can access the data through a variety of tools. Esri incorporated open datasets, referred to as Open Opportunity Data, into the company's ArcGIS platform and showed this data in interactive maps during the event.

Using US Census Bureau and US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data for jobs, education, transportation, and labor markets, as well as the Open Opportunity Data inventory, Esri created an ArcGIS software-based tool that shows where there are opportunities for low-income citizens who have children.

"Maps are the best medium for communicating where opportunities are," said Jack Dangermond, president and CEO of Esri. "Providing people with the ability to see this data on a map makes it easier for them to understand where opportunities exist in their neighborhoods. The ArcGIS platform, along with this rich, open data, provides so much potential for future planners and software developers to create smart communities."

The ArcGIS platform is used by nearly a million users, including city governments, libraries, and schools. The platform provides a broad audience for this information. Esri plans to add capabilities to normalize the information models across different government data services so that users can understand and compare cross-jurisdictional opportunities.

For more information, visit go.esri.com/policy.

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Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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