Open Data

Help the Public Find Your Information, Wherever and However You’ve Published It

As traffic to desktop .gov websites declines, how we publish our content increasingly matters. We need to meet people where they are as they seek information on the Internet. To do so, we need to adjust to the new world of mobile applications, social media, and instant answers provided by search engines. Freeing Content from

Ammie Farraj Feijoo

Aug 26, 2014

Creating an Open FEC

Campaign finance information is not very approachable, even when made available as open data. The laws that regulate how money can be spent around elections are important to our democracy, but sometimes it’s difficult to understand how these laws apply. Between Senate, House, and Presidential campaigns, thousands of people run for office on a regular

Aug 25, 2014

Preserving Fish and Wildlife Service History through Open Data Initiative

In the summer of 1914, Frederick M. Dille, manager at Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, observed: “The general conditions of affairs at Niobrara are favorable and good. The animals are thriving, the feed has been abundant, the fence is in good shape and Mr. Schultz has handled everything very satisfactory. […] The pheasants have done

Richard Easterbrook

Aug 25, 2014

How to Find Your Open Data Hotshots

How can you find the top 5 users of your open data? We were recently asked this question on the Open Data listserv, and while this information can be a good measure of success for open data programs, we also figured some of the answers shared would be of interest to the broader community. This blog

Nick Sinai

Aug 21, 2014

White House SocialGov Summit Aims to Improve Open Data Innovation

More than 100 digital engagement and open data managers from across government met with leaders in the private sector startup community August 7 at the White House for a summit on integrating our digital services with public participation to create more

Justin Herman

Aug 19, 2014

Census PoP Quiz Mobile App Challenges Knowledge of State Statistics

The U.S. Census Bureau today released Census PoP Quiz, a new interactive mobile application that challenges users’ knowledge of demographic facts for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The new app, which draws from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, aims to raise

Aug 14, 2014

Delivering a Customer-Focused Government Through Smarter IT

As technology changes, government must change with it to address new challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. This Administration has made important strides in modernizing government so that it serves its constituents more effectively and efficiently, but we know there is much more to do. Last year, a group of digital and technology experts

Steven VanRoekel

Todd Park

Beth Cobert

Aug 12, 2014

The API Briefing: An API that Searches other APIs – HealthData.Gov’s Catalog API

As federal agencies release APIs on an almost daily basis, keeping track of the numerous datasets has become a vital service for developers. The Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) manages HealthData.Gov which currently lists 1,680 datasets in 36 categories such as “Public Health,” “Health Care Cost,” and “Health Statistics.” To help developers find

Bill Brantley

Aug 06, 2014

The API Briefing: How APIs Provide Localized Information – NOAA’s Weather Service Data and FCC’s Broadband Services Map

The two featured APIs this week are excellent demonstrations of personalizing federal government data by where a user lives. Federal agencies collect a considerable amount of community data, from the Census Bureau’s surveys to the FDA’s local agricultural conditions. Thanks to GPS, app developers can locate a user’s immediate geographical location and tailor information based

Bill Brantley

Jul 09, 2014

The API Briefing: APIs Come In Many (Data) Flavors

This week, we will look at three different APIs that demonstrate how agencies use different technologies to serve out data. Presenting data in various formats encourages developers to build on federal APIs. As past columns have shown, the innovative apps created with federal data are quickly growing. The latest API news this week is how

Bill Brantley

Jul 02, 2014

Big Data, Open Data & the Federal Agencies

Open data and big data—and the responsible management and protection of that data—are key components of the President’s agenda to drive innovation and economic growth. On Thursday, June 19, leaders from civil society, industry, academia, and 40 federal departments and agencies met at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Massive Data Institute to discuss

Nick Sinai

Nicole Wong

Jul 01, 2014

Agency Dataset Publication in Data.gov

Not sure how to get your datasets into Data.gov? We’ve put together an overview to show you how the process works. Agencies prepare their enterprise data inventories in data.json format and post them on their websites (agency.gov/data.json), pursuant to the Open Data Policy and following the guidance and using the tools available on Project Open

Hyon Kim

Jun 20, 2014

The Golden Metric

Are you looking for the “golden metric” that is the best measure of your agency’s website performance and cross-comparable across .gov websites? If so, stop looking. The concept of the golden metric is a dangerous one because it oversimplifies performance analysis of your website and overlooks the truth

Marina Fox

Jun 19, 2014

DigitalGov IRL: 6 Ways To Get It Right

This morning I was walking down 18th Street, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue by the World Bank when I heard what sounded like “a test from the

Gwynne Kostin

Jun 10, 2014

Facebook Increases Public Service Verification to Improve Citizen Engagement

Facebook is now the first social media platform to start verifying all federal government pages with their signature blue checkmark using the Federal Social Media Registry API. The Federal Social Media Registry provides the singular source that allows social media platforms to quickly collect real government accounts—emphasizing the critical need to ensure the trust, quality and

Justin Herman

Jun 09, 2014

Overcoming Barriers—DigitalGov Summit Recap

As government innovators, we work to improve public services every day. In essence we are already in a public private partnership. But how can your agency capitalize on existing public private partnerships to engage citizens and enhance services? Four panelists from across government shared their public private partnerships success stories at the DigitalGov Citizen Services

Allison Alexander

Jun 05, 2014

Unleashing Data Innovation for Action on Climate Change

Last June, President Obama launched a Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address this global challenge. The plan recognizes that even as we act to curb the carbon pollution that is driving climate change,

Curt Tilmes

Jun 02, 2014

This Weekend: Event List for Civic Hacking

Our fabulous colleague Jeanne Holm is ready for the #hackforchange events this weekend and summarized some tips, notes and links to resources on Data.gov. Great things will happen this weekend! Remember, if you hear about great uses of government data, let

Tammi Marcoullier

May 30, 2014

Government IT Is a Small World

The world is getting smaller all the time for those who deal with issues of information technology (IT) in government. GSA’s long-standing relationships with high-level government IT officials in other countries are becoming more and more useful to the smooth functioning of government. With the widespread use of the Internet to conduct government business, IT

Darlene Meskell

May 28, 2014

Five Years of Open Data—Making a Difference

In May 2009, Data.gov was an experiment. There were questions: would people use the data? would agencies share the data? and would it make a difference? We’ve all come a long, long way to answering those questions, starting with only 47 datasets and having 105,000 datasets today. We realized that this was never simply about

Jeanne Holm

May 20, 2014

News and Events on Open Data