# Introduction

[DataSF](https://datasf.org) operates the City and County of San Francisco's [official open data portal](https://data.sfgov.org). We are documenting standards to make data more useful and consistent across the City at scale.

This document serves several purposes:

1. Introduce more consistency within the open data publishing process
2. Provide a single enduring, open document to help onboard new staff
3. Provide a reference for data publishers and users
4. Clarify departmental stewardship of certain reference data

We lean heavily on existing precedent where available. The scope includes:

1. Formats and data structure
2. Common reference standards (lists) that are useful across datasets and departments

We are not including domain-specific standards here like Open311 or LIVES which have their own documentation and communities. We are also not using this to propose new domain specific standards.

Throughout this guide we reference standard names and lists, please refer to the appendix for [reserved column names](/data-standards-guide/appendix/reserved-column-names.md) and an [index of reference data](/data-standards-guide/appendix/reference-index.md).


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