Princeton Researchers Say Feds Need Data Standard

dcblogs writes "The federal government's data-sharing efforts are a mess, and if Barack Obama really wants a useful 'Google for government,' he would have to set the government's vast amount of data free by exposing it and ensuring it complies to standards. Once that happens, commercial sites, aggregators, bloggers and everyone else will be able to access it, use it and transform it, argue a group of Princeton researchers (follow Download link for full PDF)."

Comments

Add them to the buying spree.

[bigtallmofo]

Barack Obama really wants a useful 'Google for government,'

Well, so far the government has bought parts of Bear Stearns and AIG. Maybe it's time they diversify into some technology companies like Google? Hell, let's buy them too!

Re:Add them to the buying spree.

[betterunixthanunix]

It is more a question of whether or not citizens will be able to access government data in a meaningful way. If the government wants to standardize its data, it can, assuming it contracts with a company that actually knows what it is doing (this is the real hitch). Government employees need to be able to continue doing what they normally do, and have the standardization happen automatically -- such as a MS .doc to ODF converter that silently makes the conversion whenever a file is saved, or another tool that automatically indexes files as they are saved. Such things already exist, it is just a matter of implementing on the scale of the government.

GOXML

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that Microsoft is already working on the problem with their proposed "Government Open XML" standard. This should not be confused with GOXMLb ("Google Open XML beta") because Microsoft would never try to confuse people on such an issue.

It is going up for ISO vote next week. Be there*.

(*) it will be very profitable for you to "be there".... nudge, nudge... wink, wink...

Re:Welcome to the "duh" department

[Talchas]

No, but it takes at least a team of researchers to get the government to listen.

Re:Shakespeare:To share or not to share?

[betterunixthanunix]

We are not talking about the government sharing data on individual citizens or on military secrets. We are talking about things involving government spending, contracts, loans, grants, etc. Things that citizens should have access to, but have trouble organizing.