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Good practice Imported

Local Law 35 — New York City's Annual Public Inventory of Municipal Algorithmic Tools

United States of America · New York City · See the United States of America profile · See the New York City profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 62% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Under NYC's Local Law 35 (2022), every city agency must publicly report each algorithmic tool it used yearly. The 2023 report counted 46 tools across 14 agencies - six times the 8 recorded a decade earlier - after inconsistent reporting forced clearer definitions.

46 across 14 agencies
Algorithmic tools reported (2023)
~35%
Tools processing PII (2023)
Local Law 35 — New York City's Annual Public Inventory of Municipal Algorithmic Tools

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
NYC Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)
Period
2022–present
Keywords
AI transparency, municipal government, digital government, public administration

Context

Local Law 35 of 2022 requires every New York City agency to report annually on each algorithmic tool it used, including purpose, data sources and vendor role. The Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) compiles agency submissions into a public annual report released as PDF, JSON, XML and CSV.

Results

The 2023 compliance report counted 46 algorithmic tools in use across 14 city agencies, up roughly sixfold from 8 tools identified a decade earlier. Around 35% of the listed tools process personally identifying information such as names, location or health data.

Conclusions

OTI acknowledged early reports suffered from inconsistent terminology across agencies and issued clearer shared definitions -- an admission that the inventory's completeness depends on how consistently agencies interpret the law's scope. The report catalogues tools in use; it does not evaluate whether they work well or are used fairly.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
NYC Office of Technology and Innovation compliance team, Per-agency reporting liaisons

Conditions for success

  • Legal mandate with annual reporting cycle
  • Machine-readable public output formats
  • Shared terminology/definitions across agencies

Common failure modes

  • Inconsistent terminology across agencies in early reporting cycles

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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