What the Government's New Open Data Policy Means for Developers
The federal government collects and compiles vast quantities of data, but in the past these datasets were largely opaque to the public, hard to find, or locked-up in unusable formats. Now, the public will have open access—along with open source tools—to mine the trove of data from the government’s vast information vault.
President Obama signed the Open Data Executive Order on May 9, 2013, mandating that open government data is now the standard—not the exception. In conjunction with a new Open Data Policy released by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget, the public will be able to access government datasets rendered in open, machine-readable formats like CSV, XML, and JSON and, when appropriate, expose data via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Data already released includes:
Health. Medicare published new data that for the first time gives consumers information on what hospitals charge for common inpatient procedures. This generated a lot of headlines, such as this one from the Washington Post: “One hospital charges $8,000 — another, $38,000”.
Energy. The Energy Information Administration released an API that enables technology companies to quickly extract energy statistics, including historical time series of energy production, consumption, prices, and expenditures by state.
Education. The US Department of Education's College Affordability and Transparency Center has released College Scorecard, a planning tool for selecting a college.
Public Safety. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an API that provides access to the 5-Star Safety Ratings System, which includes crash test results, rollover ratings, and safety features for vehicles sold in the United States.
Finance. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has expanded its Consumer Complaint Database.
Global Development. The United States Agency for International Development added an API for the “Green Book,” a database of US foreign assistance, including military assistance, to every country in the world since 1946.
The central hub for open government data is Data.gov. More information is available for Project Open Data on GitHub, a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system.
The White House’s open data announcement has been widely applauded. According to VentureBeat’s Dylan Tweney, “This is the geekiest thing the feds have ever done.”
Open government data is already the basis of many technologies. For example, the US government’s global positioning system, once reserved for military use, is used in technologies from aircraft navigation systems to location-based apps on a smartphone.
The hope is that, by making information generated and stored by the federal government more open and accessible, entrepreneurs, developers, and others will use those files to create new products and services—creating more jobs.
