The Center for Geographic Analysis with the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the IQSS, is building a proof-of-concept system called the Boston Data Portal. This geographically-based internet portal is aimed at providing both government and academic datasets, covering both the City of Boston and the surrounding metro region, including both current and historical data, in support of both researchers and policy makers. By making city data available to the researchers and research findings available to the city policy makers, the portal will help foster stronger connections between local scholars and policy makers. It is designed to promote research-based decision making and problem-driven cross-disciplinary research. The portal will be a customized implementation of the Harvard University Geospatial Infrastructure for Collaboration (HUG) which was initially developed for the AfricaMap project.