The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), one of 13 regional planning agencies in the Commonwealth, serves MetroBoston’s 101 cities and towns. It provides analytical, planning and mapping services to its municipalities and their community-based organizations, and maintains a MetroData Center offering statistical profiles, US Census and other data, and projects population, household and employment trends. MAPC’s GIS Lab also provides mapping services and technical assistance to communities to set up GIS systems. MAPC’s MetroFuture: Building a Better Greater Boston, involving thousands of residents, planners, and public officials, is working to create a plan for Metro Boston’s growth and development through 2030, exploring challenges and engaging the public in examining the impacts of growth patterns. The project is generating scenarios for MetroBoston residents and policy makers to choose among based on five study areas: People and Communities, Buildings and Landscapes, Air, Water, and Wildlife, Getting Around and Prosperity. MAPC staff are planning for the region’s economic development, land use, transportation systems, environmental resources, shared municipal resources and services, and municipal collaboration.

The Boston Indicator Project's award-winning website, coordinated by the Boston Foundation, Greater Boston’s community foundation, in partnership with the City of Boston and MAPC, offers interactive overviews and indicators of change and progress in ten sectors for Boston, its neighborhoods and the region: Civic Health, Cultural Life and the Arts, Economy, Education, Environment, Housing, Public Health, Public Safety, Technology, and Transportation. It also posts of new research, links to other data-rich websites by sector in Links and Resources and to comprehensive sites through a through a Data Portal. Graphs, tables, and maps can be enlarged and printed, and in most cases, underlying data tables can be downloaded as Excel files. It also features a Hub of Innovation by sector and a Cultural Resources Survey that gather and display the contributions of the region’s ethnic groups to its cultural landscape. See also Understanding Boston for Boston Foundation-sponsored research on key issues facing the city and region.

The Urban Information Systems group at Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT)’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, in partnership with MAPC and funded by the Brookings Institution's Urban Markets Initiative, is developing a new open source data tool with the potential to allow municipal agencies and neighborhood groups to react to real-time changes in their communities’ data. This "intelligent middleware" will enhance the "data reporting" function in the information cycle by making it possible report, aggregate, and combine data from heterogeneous data sets. The middleware tool will increase Greater Boston's access to "actionable knowledge" accurate, up-to-date data by creating the capacity to “fuse,” through an automated process, heterogeneous or idiosyncratic data sets from various providers which would otherwise incompatible. Stay tuned.

Massachusetts’ Office of Geographic and Environmental Information (MassGIS) is located in Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. It provides a comprehensive database of statewide and regional spatial information for environmental planning and management for uses by municipalities, planners, educators, and residents. Recent legislation established MassGIS as Massachusetts’ official agency for the collection, storage, and dissemination of geographic data, also giving it the mandate to set standards for geographic data to ensure universal compatibility across state agencies and localities. The MassGIS website provides comprehensive data for download and a web-based mapping application, OLIVER (which requires the installation of Java).