Bipartisan legislation seeks to keep previously-opened government data online

"A new bipartisan bill seeks to ensure that all openly published federal data remains so, and in a machine-readable format.

The Preserving Data in Government Act introduced Thursday 'would require federal agencies to preserve public access to existing open datasets, and prevent the removal of existing datasets without sufficient public notice,' according to a news release. Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced the bill.

The crux of the bill is that 'any open Government data that is made available to the public for a period of not less than 90 consecutive days shall (1) remain machine-readable, available in an open format, and part of the worldwide public domain or, if necessary, published with an open license; and (2) not be altered in such a way as to decrease the machine-readable nature of the open Government data.'

The bill comes after many have fretted that data paid for by taxpayer dollars could disappear under different Trump administration priorities. In February an event was held in D.C., for example, to make copies of some of that data, one of many events that had taken place around the country."