Data.gov is a U.S. Government website launched in late May 2009 by the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States, Vivek Kundra. Data.gov aims to improve public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. The site is a repository for Federal, state, local, and tribal government information made available to the public.

History and background

On March 5, 2009, shortly after his appointment as the first Federal Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra announced the creation of Data.gov. The website is managed and hosted by the U.S. General Services Administration, Technology Transformation Services. The site introduced the philosophy of digital open data to the U.S. Federal government, an approach which according to the book ''Democratizing Data'' will have benefits for states including "rebuilding confidence in government and business". Data.gov has grown from 47 datasets at launch to over 370,000 datasets. Jeanne Holm, Chief Knowledge Architect for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

), was the Evangelist and knowledge architect for Data.gov,

James Hendler James Alexander Hendler (born April 2, 1957) is an artificial intelligence researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States, and one of the originators of the Semantic Web. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administr ...

, an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

researcher at

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

, was at the time named the "Internet Web Expert" and tasked with helping Data.gov exploit advanced Web technologies. Data.gov was one of the first efforts to create an open data ecosystem -- using data as the basis for connecting government agencies, researchers, businesses, and civil society. Communities of practice were created around key topics such as

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

, providing a way for researchers to ask for data and to coordinate work across government agencies. By the end of 2010, most Federal agencies had published data on Data.gov. In November 2010, the Data.gov team hosted the first

International Open Government Data Conference Lasting from November 15, 2010 to November 17, 2010, The International Open Government Data Conference was a conference sponsored by the United States General Services Administration and hosted by the United States Department of Commerce on the ...

with 10 nations participating to expand the principles of open data. This conference grew to become the International Open Data Conference. By 2012, open data from Data.gov was regularly used by civil society and business. Community led efforts like hackathons from

Code for America Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organiza ...

and events such as the National Day of Civic Hacking, relied on government data provided by Data.gov. The Gov Lab created the Open Data 500 to showcase businesses built on open data provided by Data.gov. To ensure open data's sustainability, President Obama created an executive order on "Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information" to formalize Data.gov as the permanent repository for open government data. McKinsey & Company published research showing that open data contributed $3 trillion to the U.S. economy. Two of the biggest datasets for economic impact have been

global positioning satellite The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sys ...

data from the U.S. Space Force and weather data from the

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

. By 2014, all 175 Federal agencies and 77 other organizations had published data on the site, in both human understandable and machine readable formats and with open APIs. On January 14, 2019, the OPEN Government Data Act, as part of th
Foundations for Evidence Based Policymaking Act
became

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

. The OPEN Government Data Act makes Data.gov a requirement in statute, rather than a policy. It requires federal agencies to publish their information online as open data, using standardized, machine-readable data formats, with their metadata included in the Data.gov catalog. Data.gov is working with an expanded group of federal agencies to include their datasets in Data.gov as they implement the new law.

Open Government Directive

The U.S. Open Government Directive of December 8, 2009, required that all agencies post at least three high-value data sets online and register them on Data.gov within 45 days.

OPEN Government Data Act

Th
Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (“Evidence Act”)
signed into law on January 14, 2019, emphasizes collaboration and coordination to advance data and evidence-building functions in the Federal Government by statutorily mandating Federal evidence-building activities, open government data, and confidential information protection and statistical efficiency. Title II of the Foundations for Evidence Based Policymaking Act, the OPEN Government Data Act, requires additional agencies to comply with the statute by providing access to free, open, and machine readable data. Additionally, the Office of Management and Budget is required to collaborate with the Office of Government Information Services and the Administrator of General Services to develop and maintain an online repository of tools, best practices, and schema standards to facilitate the adoption of open data practices across the Federal Government.

Apps

A list of software applications using data from data.gov can be seen a
data.gov/applications

References

{{reflist

External links