US Federal Government Launches Data.gov

Elastic Vapor writes "I'm happy to announce that the US Federal Government earlier today launched the new Data.Gov website. The primary goal of Data.Gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Data.gov strives to make government more transparent and is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen the Nation's democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." I hope the data reported will be impartially selected, honestly gathered, clearly explained, and perfectly accurate. Perhaps they could start with inspiration from the Concord Coalition's National Debt Counter.

Comments

Uh-oh, here we go....

[martin_henry]

www.data.gov gets slashdotted in 3...2...1...

Re:Uh-oh, here we go....

[skarphace]

Openness or Control? I see it as a fail... You can probably get everything you need on google anyways... Unless it can tell me how to make millions and not pay taxes like the crooks in washington then its of no value

There's a couple problems with your 'thoughts.' First, you assume everything's already on the Web. That's totally false. Second, you neglect to realize what you can do with machine readable data. Instead of trying to build hackish page scrapers, you can now use various APIs and get bulk data dumps(depending on what the agency offers). Data.gov is freaking huge. Anyone that plays around with governmental data knows the power that this site will bring.

The only problem I see with it so far is that it's just a portal for the most part. It's a nice way to get at all the agencies' data in one spot but so far, as of this writing, it's nothing to rave about.

Department of Homeland Security

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Search for "millimeter"

0 results found

Also not found: CIA, NSA, NASA, Project Bluebook

Re:Department of Homeland Security

[compro01]

Try "0.039 inch".

I'll finally be able to know

[Anonymous Coward]

what you did last summer, free of charge.

Hope springs eternal

[gammygator]

"I hope the data reported will be impartially selected, honestly gathered, clearly explained, and perfectly accurate."

Good luck with that, this is the government we're talking about...

Re:Hope springs eternal

[timeOday]

Good luck with that, this is the government we're talking about...

Yeah, I think sarcasm was his point. Personally I don't get it. Nobody's perfect, but I trust .gov data more than from private companies almost any day.

Re:Hope springs eternal

[SatanicPuppy]

He misses the point with his naivety, but you miss it with your cynicism. The data will still be incredibly useful, even if they're trying to game it, or sloppily collecting it, or if they're putting it up in an obscure, unorganized format.

A broad enough dataset can be used to determine things well beyond it's intended scope.

Stick it in Wolfram Alpha

[malevolentjelly]

Let's get some of this data into Wolfram Alpha. Then we query things and get simple charts and graphs that will scare the living hell out of the average tax payer. "Annual cost of tank treads"... "total corporate welfare"...

Re:Stick it in Wolfram Alpha

[modestmelody]

One of the best tools I've found online for going through government data is the IPEDS (Integrated Post-Secondary Data System), which allows you to mine for some pretty interesting and specific information that's reported to the Department of Education by all post-secondary institutions. The ability to work with this common data collected by the government anyway makes my own research far easier.

Wolfram|Alpha mining sets like these would just take the whole process one step further by allowing non-expert users access using plain language searches. I'm all for it.

People want accountability from their government, but I think many of those same people a) Don't understand how to read through thousands of pages of complex collected data b) Assume the government knows how to do (a) well, and c) Are often too lazy to do (a) and based on (b) thinks it should just be laid out there in pretty pictures just because they thought that information was important in the moment. This is precisely where a tool like Wolfram|Alpha could be quite useful.

Now if only Wolfram would list their sources and be far more clear about how a data set was collected and interpreted, then we'd really be able to get to work.

Limited but good potential

[Statecraftsman]

So far I see only 47 datasets available(is that the best you can do US Gov't?!?!) but the best thing about this site is that it serves as an official directory to myriad data sources. Higher visibility of that data to the general public may encourage more citizens to ask for this kind of data for their areas of interest or for their jurisdictions. So overall this is a good thing. The only thing I wish they would do is provide a forum/mailing list where data consuming developers can coordinate their tools to process this data. I expressed more about this idea here: http://www.thenationaldialogue.org/ideas/grow-a-development-data-analysis-community

IIS, once again

[tcopeland]

$ curl -i http://data.gov/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:13:00 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

Bah!

Re:IIS, once again

[Alinabi]

Forget about IIS. Most of the data is in DBF format. DBF!!! How about using some non-proprietary format from this century like, say, XML.

Unbiased opinion?

[kmac06]

...committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen the Nation's democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

That sounds like it was written by the Ministry of Truth. No one should ever read something like that without huge warning bells going off.

Re:Unbiased opinion?

[locallyunscene]

It would be the Ministry of Truth if this organization made sure it was the only supplier and analyzer of this information, rather than allowing it to escape on "the internet".

The data itself could be heavily biased, but since the current data sets seem to be census data and similar sets(taxes, marriage/divorce rates), it doesn't seem to have the aim of a propaganda tool currently.

It could be turned to one to be sure, but if it does provide moderately raw data sets then I'd say it would promote democracy.

Will it change with each new administration?

[really_irish_man]

The government is an easy target to pick on, but they do have some really useful sites such as thomas.loc.gov and census.gov. Data.gov is a great concept, my only concern is will it change every time a new president takes office? Just as the various executive orders are issued and rescinded based on who's in power, will they also tinker with what data, data.gov will own?

Re:Unbiased opinion? BLAME CANADA

[rpillala]

Fox was reporting recently that higher fuel efficiency standards put your family's lives on the line. When really it's driving that does that.

So it shouldn't be too long.

Mirror it quick

[TomRC]

I hope someone will mirror the data there the instant it appears, so when someone in power decides that an inconveniently revealed truth needs to be shoved down the memory hole, a web app will instantly highlight any redacted information.

laboratoryofthestates.com

[Baldrson]

Try laboratoryofthestates.com which I set up after the Feds decided to turn the national IT infrastructure over to India and send guys the guys who built the information industry to go eat out of dumpsters.

I did it on no money and it has more data than data.gov.