We saw with the primaries across the country earlier this week that the voting public is voting for change. In a number of instances, the old-guard incumbent was bounced in favor of the shiny new prospect touting a different approach, touting a change. These candidates likely won on their ability to talk about their beliefs, make promises, show how they are different, and to empathize with their constituents. To put it in our terms, the reason they won is they had and were able to highlight the best data.
Not to be outdone, the Obama administration this week is re-launching www.data.gov. This site is the federal government’s online data repository. Data.gov launched one year ago and has received 97.6 million hits, holds 250,000 government data sets, and has created 237 applications and mashups based on the data provided. That’s a lot of data folks.
So, why the redo? In a word, data.
The new site will focus on: presenting data in an easier to use IT Dashboard representation, provide improved search through integration of Microsoft Bing, and the integration of third party applications. One of the highlighted third party applications is focused on “quickly building data visualization apps and mashups from government data sets, including visualizations of the White House visitor list, a map of ozone levels nationwide, and maps and visualizations of international aid levels.”
This is serious use of public data to provide dashboards, build new applications, provide visualizations and analytics. Major user driven business intelligence of government sponsored data – stay tuned, check it out, and most of all give feedback. You are the experts in this field and it’s your tax dollars driving these kind of data advancements for the government, let them and us know how it is working.
