Feds to Open Data Access in a Big Way | Government | E-Commerce Times

"Making money from accessing the vast amounts of information collected by the U.S. government has been the basis for many commercial enterprises. The widespread use of Census Bureau data alone has been a great business resource for decades -- with a relatively new twist as a component of Google Maps.  Now the U.S. government has undertaken a major effort to make tons of federal information from all agencies more accessible for the general public and the business community. The government's Open Data Policy requires federal agencies to put most of their information resources into electronically accessible configurations.  'One of the things we're doing to fuel more private sector innovation and discovery is to make vast amounts of America's data open and easy to access for the first time in history,' said President Obama when he announced the program in a May 9 executive order. The Office of Management Budget supplemented the order with an implementation directive.The program will provide an interesting example of matching older government 'legacy' IT systems with more advanced technologies including cloud services and the involvement of GitHub -- a software startup that wasn't even in business five years ago. ''By requiring that government agencies provide newly generated government data in machine-readable formats like CSV, XML and JSON -- and when appropriate, expose data via Application Programming Interfaces -- the new executive order and policy will further accelerate the liberation of government data," said Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel. The Open Data Policy directs federal agencies to collect or create information in a way that supports downstream information processing and dissemination activities, and to build information systems to support interoperability and accessibility. Agencies will be required to improve data management and release practices, as well as to strengthen privacy and security measures. The OMB directive includes several IT compliance elements: Formatting: Agencies must use machine-readable and open formats for information as it is collected or created. While information should be collected electronically by default, machine-readable and open formats must be used in conjunction with electronic, telephone or paper-based collection. Open access: Federal data managers must apply open licenses to information as it is collected or created so that if data is made public, there are no restrictions on copying, publishing, distributing, transmitting, adapting, or otherwise using the information for noncommercial or commercial purposes. Structure: Agencies must describe information using common core metadata as it is collected and created. Metadata should also include information about origin, linked data, geographic location, time series continuations, data quality, and other relevant indices that reveal relationships between datasets and allow the public to determine the fitness of the data source. As the program unfolds, the federal chief information officer and chief technology officer will release free, open source tools on Github ... To further spur agency action, operations at Data.gov, the federal website and portal for accessing executive branch information, will be expanded to include new services such as improved visualization, mapping tools, and better context to help locate and understand data resources.  In addition, the site will offer robust API access for developers. Since Data.gov was launched in 2009, available data sets have grown from 47 to 400,000. Consumers have used the site for tasks from tracking product recalls to obtaining air travel on-time records.

One likely impact of the program will be the incorporation of cloud technology into the process ... One aspect of the program presents both an opportunity and a challenge. The policy specifically calls for improved interoperability as a factor for advancing open data implementation ... "