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Data.gov in crisis
Data.gov in crisis

Data.gov in crisis: the open data movement is bigger than just one site

This article is more than 12 years old
Data.gov may close as part of slashed budget cuts hitting US government open data sites. Flowing Data's Nathan Yau explains how it will (and won't) affect open data

About two years ago, Data.gov launched as a big step towards government transparency and accountability. A few months later, New York and San Francisco released their own data sites for detailed, city-specific data, and Data.gov.uk launched not too long after. Needless to say, a movement for open government was building momentum, and the popularity of data itself in other sectors continues to rise.

However, in the next few months, Data.gov, along with a number of other data-related sites of the government such as USAspending.gov and Apps.gov, are slated to be shut down due to budget cuts. The current annual budget of $37 million will be reduced to $2 million.

This budget reduction is of course a huge deal to the data community, and if the sites actually do shut down in June and July of this year, it would be a huge shame. Readers of this blog understand the benefits of data and openness, and if you believe in open data, I highly encourage you to sign the petition penned by the Sunlight Foundation, an organization here in the US that is a big promoter of government transparency.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web and a leader in the development of Data.gov.uk, encourages you, too.

That said, what would happen if the budget cut became reality? Outside the data community, most people wouldn't notice. Here's a snapshot of visitors to the Data.gov and USASpending.gov, according to Compete.

Although I've found that Compete tends to underestimate visitor counts, it does give a rough idea of the interest. For a point of reference, here's the same comparison, including the Guardian site.

In February 2011, there was just under 10,000 visitors to USASpending.gov, which is a small number by Web standards. To make things worse, it reportedly costs $4 million per year (about $333k per month) just to keep the site going. I'm not going to pretend to know how federal budgets work, but that seems a bit high. In contrast, FlowingData has about eighty-fold the number of visitors per month and costs nowhere near a thousand a month to keep going. Again, Compete estimates are rough and USASpending.gov is more than an online publication, but still. As another contrast, Data.gov.uk didn't even cost a million to develop.

As for Data.gov, the sense that I get is that people like to know that it exists— the idea that politicians have to be held accountable for their actions— but few people actually use the service.

I've tried to use Data.gov a number of times, but the results are rarely useful. The site is slow, hard to use, and hasn't changed much since it launched two years ago. Look for a dataset, and you're most likely to get old datasets dating as far back as four decades ago. Recent data is harder to come by on the site.

The good news is that even if Data.gov does go down, many government agencies will continue to publish data. A quick Google will most likely lead you directly to one of them. I haven't looked at all the data on Data.gov, but I believe most, if not all of the data on the site, is still available elsewhere. With $2 million still in the budget, that at least leaves room to provide a list of links to available datasets. If not, maybe sites like Infochimps or Datamarket will be able to help with that.

My hope, however, is that Data.gov is able to stick around in the end. It's rough, but there is plenty of potential. If the data sites are shut down, you can still find comfort in knowing that it wouldn't be the end up the push for more government transparency and open data—just a blip in the best way to make the data available.

Nathan Yau runs Flowing Data

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