1: Federal Data

Allow members of the public to leverage Federal data for robust discovery of information, knowledge and innovation.

Other Information:

Making Federal data more transparent has many benefits including the potential to maximize the return on investments in collecting and managing the data themselves by transcending agency stovepipes, encouraging data to be disseminated in reusable and interoperable formats, and facilitating enhanced search abilities. As was the case for the Human Genome project, releasing datasets beyond the walls of government allows for expanded public access, facilitating creativity and ingenuity. Understanding the potential value of Data.gov rests with considering the nature and quantity of the Federal data themselves. For example, Performance and Accountability Reports5 (PAR) are currently published by agencies in a document‐centric report. While PAR is of value to students of government performance, the reports are not standardized and for the most part the underlying data is programmatically inaccessible – making it difficult and effort intensive to do additional analysis on the provided information, much less look at cross‐agency trends and performance. In the future the standard reports, such as the PAR, could separate and publish via Data.gov the underlying data. This vision of unbundling the finished report from the underlying data, and potentially augmenting or replacing the traditional document‐centric report with data visualizations or web applications, can be extended across many other classes of Government reports. Further, many opportunities exist for adding value such as exploring more timely release of in‐process data assets, rather than accumulating, processing, and disseminating data on longer, agency‐centric timelines. In particular, more timely release of data would support more timely, third‐party analysis and have the potential to empower more proactive public‐initiated dialog.

Stakeholder(s):

• General Public: The general public can use the platform to download datasets. The general public can also discover and access Federal data via third‐party visualizations, applications, tools or data infrastructure.


• Application Developers: Application developers can develop and deliver applications by leveraging the raw data, APIs or other methods of data delivery.


• Government Mission Owners: Mission owners can expand access to and leverage data from their public sector partners to enhance service delivery, drive performance outcomes and effectively manage government resources.


• Data Infrastructure Developers: Data infrastructure developers can increase the utility of Data.gov by enhancing its search capability, metadata catalog processes, data interoperability and ongoing evolution.


• Research Community: The research community can help unlock the value of multiple datasets by providing insight on a plethora of research topics.


• Data Infrastructure Innovators: Existing entities and new ventures developing innovative data and application offerings that combine public sector data with their own data.

Objective(s):

1.1: Raw Data Catalog

1.2: Tool Catalog

1.3: Geodata Catalog

Content