The Federal Times, the news and information service for federal managers, reports that agencies are under more pressure to release government data to the public and ensure it is packaged in formats that promote widespread use and dissemination.
On Thursday, May 9, 2013, President Obama directed agencies through an executive order to make their data easy to find and use by the public, “wherever possible and legally permissible.”
“We sit on a treasure trove of data in the government that’s been locked up in paper and proprietary systems. As [agencies] modernize their systems they will make this data machine-readable. They will do this while protecting privacy, confidentiality and security,” said federal chief information officer Steven VanRoekel to reporters Thursday.
The president’s mandate was initially pushed forward in May of 2009 with the launch of Data.gov. Agencies were required to provide at least three “high-value data sets” through the portal.
However, the data sets initially published through Data.gov were in a vast assortment of formats, and the new requirements came without any funding to produce the open sets from systems that were largely built on a patchwork of platforms and applications.
Under the new open data policy issued by the Office of Management and Budget, agencies must meet goals for improving how they gather, manage and share their data. Agencies will be required to maintain an updated inventory of their data sets, provide a public listing of all public data, and ensure data are created and stored in machine-readable and open formats, whether collected electronically, by phone or on paper. Agencies must also use metadata to describe the origin of data, any related data, data quality and other relevant details, according to the policy. All systems must be built on open standards to facilitate data sharing.
