The Open Data Portal, in plain English

This page is for any Lexington resident who has heard the phrase "open data" and wants to know what that actually means before clicking around our dashboard. No jargon, no acronyms left undefined.

An open-data portalopen-data-portalA public website where a government publishes raw datasets in machine-readable form. Lexington's portal at data.lexingtonky.gov runs on the ArcGIS Hub platform (previously Socrata) and is the source for the datasets indexed here. is a public website where a government publishes its operational records in machine-readable form — meaning a computer can read them, not just a person staring at a PDF. Each record set is called a datasetdatasetA structured table of public records published in machine-readable form (CSV/JSON). Each row is one record — a 311 call, one permit, one inspection.. A dataset is just a table: rows and columns, like a spreadsheet, except live and query-able by anyone with an internet connection.

Lexington's open-data portal lives at data.lexingtonky.gov. The city built it because Kentucky's Open Records Act (KRS 61.870–61.884) gives the public a right to these records anyway — putting them online up front is faster and cheaper for everyone than processing one paper request at a time.

ArcGIS Hubarcgis-hubArcGIS Hub is the open-data publishing platform from Esri (the GIS software company). Lexington's open-data portal at data.lexingtonky.gov runs on Hub. It exposes datasets via a federal-standard catalog (`/data.json`) and downloadable GeoJSON files — the format we ingest into LexDOGE. is a publishing platform from Esri — the company that makes most of the mapping ("GIS") software local governments use. It wraps each dataset as a live download (you can grab the whole thing as GeoJSON, CSV, or KML) and lists every dataset in a federal-standard catalog at /data.json. Lots of cities and counties use Hub for the same reason: it's a turnkey way to publish their map layers and tabular records without building a portal from scratch.

You don't need to know any of this to use the data — the city's page lets you browse and download every dataset directly. We mention it because Lexington was previously on a different platform called SocratasocrataSocrata is the software platform Lexington's open-data portal previously ran on. The city has since migrated to ArcGIS Hub. The portal URL (data.lexingtonky.gov) stayed the same; the technology underneath changed. We mention Socrata here because older documentation and links may still reference it.; the catalog still lives at the same URL.

LFUCG publishes dozens of datasets through ArcGIS Hub. The four we index right now are the operational GIS layers that touch every property in town:

1. ParcelsparcelA single piece of land with a unique boundary, owner of record, and tax assignment. Lexington has roughly 114,000 parcels. The PVA (Property Valuation Administrator) maintains the legal record; the LFUCG GIS office maintains the spatial boundaries.. Every land parcel in Lexington-Fayette County — roughly 114,000 of them. Each row is one piece of land: who's listed as the owner of record, the parcel's classification, lot size, and how it ties to a street address. This is the source of truth for property-tax math and zoning lookups.
2. Zoning districtszoning-districtA polygon on the city map carrying a zoning code (R-1, B-1, A-U, etc.) that constrains what can legally be built or operated there. Boundaries are approved by the Planning Commission and Urban County Council.. Every zoning boundary drawn on the city map, with its code (R-1 single-family residential, B-1 neighborhood business, A-U agricultural-urban, etc.) and the date it was entered. The Planning Commission and Urban County Council approve changes; the Division of Planning maintains the file.
3. E911 address pointse911-addressAn address recognized by Lexington's 911 system for dispatch and city services. Maintained by the LFUCG E911 Addressing Office, separate from postal addresses.. Every recognized address in Lexington-Fayette County, maintained by the LFUCG E911 Addressing Office. Each row carries an address-type code — R (residential), O (other/commercial), V (vacant), X (deleted), P (parcel-based), S (structure) — so 911 dispatch and city services can route correctly.
4. Public-school locations. Every public-school location in Lexington-Fayette County — coordinates plus name and basic facility metadata. Updated from public records and FCPS coordination.

Each dataset on our main page carries a card showing its row count, its column list, when the city last updated it, and when we last ingested it — plus a "plain English" footnote translating what the dataset actually means for a resident.

Our pipeline talks to Lexington's portal on a schedule (roughly every 6 hours). For each dataset we track, we record:

• The dataset's name, description, and column list — so we can notice when the city changes the schema (renaming a column, adding a new one, dropping one).
• An estimated row count — so we can notice when a dataset stops growing, or starts shrinking unexpectedly.
• The city's "last updated" timestamp and our own "last ingested" timestamp — so you can tell at a glance whether the copy you're looking at is fresh.

We need to be clear about the limits.

• We only mirror datasets the city has already made public. We don't request, surface, or speculate about records the city has not chosen to publish. If a dataset isn't on data.lexingtonky.gov, it isn't here.
• No personal information. Our indexed datasets are spatial / property records, not personally identifiable activity logs. We don't index anything Lexington withholds, and we don't enrich, cross-reference, or re-identify anyone.
• No real-time emergency data. 911 calls, active police incidents, ambulance dispatches — none of that lives on the open-data portal, and none of it lives here. For that you want the city's own real-time channels.
• Patterns are not findings. For example: if zoning changes accelerate in one council district relative to historical baseline, that is a pattern worth questioning — not a finding. The data can show what was recorded; it cannot tell you why.

Every claim on the main open-data page is checkable against the city's portal directly. You do not have to take our word for any of it.

• data.lexingtonky.gov — the official LFUCG open-data portal
• dev.socrata.com — developer docs for the platform, if you want to query a dataset yourself
• Kentucky Open Records Act (KRS 61.870–61.884) — the underlying public-records law

LexDOGE is a public-interest civic-transparency project. We describe what the public records say, not what we wish they said. If something on this page is wrong or out of date, email info@lexdoge.org and we will issue a correction.