Page:Opengov report.pdf/18

 Data.gov

Agency Data Sets. Over the last two years, agencies have provided the public with access to hundreds of thousands of data sets, as part of agencies' larger Open Government Plans. By May 2010, one year after Data.gov's creation, federal agencies had provided the public with access to over 272,000 data sets. By September 2011, the number of agency data sets newly available to the public grew to over 389,000. Agency data sets available through Data.gov concern a wide range of subjects, corresponding to federal agencies' broad responsibilities, including air travel, air quality, automobile safety, crime, drug safety, education and early childhood learning, the employment market, health care, nutrition, obesity, and workplace safety, among others.

Over the past two years, this gateway to original agency data has seen more than 200 million hits. Government data sets have been downloaded over 2 million times. Data sets from EPA alone have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. As agencies are continuing to make information available to the public, these numbers grow daily. In short, Data.gov has democratized federal agency data.

These data have proven valuable in several ways. First, Data.gov aggregates and presents certain agency data. For example, information about air quality is available through the "Clean Air Status and Trends Network," which provides measurements of ambient ozone levels from EPA measuring stations around the country. These data not only provide absolute measurements but also geographic comparisons, presented in both quantitative and visual form.

The information accessible through Data.gov can also be used by researchers to conduct studies. Entrepreneurs and scientists too can use this raw agency data to build new data-oriented services. Over the past year, data developers have converted the raw agency data made available at Data.gov into user-friendly data applications, providing ordinary citizens with information in forms they can readily use.

Data.gov Communities. Data.gov also houses data-oriented "Communities." These communities provide an organizing framework for data relating to particular subject matter. The first such community, Health.data.gov, was launched in February 2011. Health.data.gov provides numerous health-related datasets, tools, and applications collected from many agencies, including information for non-experts. For instance, patients and consumers can retrieve the latest information about drug labeling and medication content. Health.data.gov's "Insurance Finder" provides a customized menu of potential insurance choices based on a user's answers to several simple questions. Information concerning leading health indicators is also available at Health.data.gov.

Law.data.gov, another community at Data.gov, provides access to legal decisions from across the executive branch, and in particular those rendered by administrative agencies. Agencies' legal decisions—including agency adjudications, administrative rules, authoritative guidances, and other sources of law—profoundly shape the implementation of laws passed by Congress. Yet such legal sources can sometimes be difficult to find. Law.data.gov gathers such sources from across the executive branch in one searchable place, providing greater access to legal materials for ordinary citizens, researchers, and not least of all small businesses. Since its