Data.gov, Providing Public Access to US Federal Government Datasets

The Obama administration has just launched the new website Data.gov to provide public access to US Federal Government datasets, helping to democratize the data.

As a priority Open Government Initiative for President Obama’s administration, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version of Data.gov.