NASA Explores New World Of Open Data - InformationWeek

"NASA has been an open data operation since the passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, in the very earliest days of the Space Race after Sputnik. The agency has always published untold volumes of scientific data. Yet the kind of standardized, machine-readable data demanded by the Obama Administration's Open Government Initiative remains a challenge ... Most of the data is already digital and readable by some internal applications created by NASA and its network of contractors. The challenge is finding it in a sprawling, decentralized organization and putting it in a form that others can use. Some important data is locked up in the form of PDFs of scientific articles, when a data analyst would much prefer structured XML or even a comma-delimited download of tabular data ... That job rests on Jason Duley, whom Beck introduces as her 'data emperor.' His real title is lead software developer for the open innovation team. NASA has established the data.nasa.gov website, which feeds into the centralized data.gov catalogue established by the White House. NASA's open data effort has intensified since February or March, when the White House Office of Management and Budget began pushing the open government policy harder, Duley said. A year ago, NASA had 25 published open-data sets. Within a few months, Duley expects to have more than 4,000 available. However, that is still only scratching the service ..."