Data.gov is a U.S. government website launched in late May 2009 by the then Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States, Vivek Kundra.
According to its website, "The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government."[1]
The site seeks to become "a repository for all the information the government collects." The site would publish to the public any data that is not private or restricted for national security reasons.[2]
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On March 5, 2009, shortly after his appointment as the first Federal Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra announced the creation of Data.gov.[2] Kundra said, "Data.gov will publish data feeds, so we'll have a vast array of data".[3]
The purpose of the site is to establish a set of requirements "that will make it possible to establish a web services infrastructure to expose at least partial representations of these databases as streams of XML."[4]
The site will bring some of the philosophy of open data to the government, an approach which the book Democratizing Data states will have benefits including "rebuilding confidence in government and business".[5]
It has been reported that the 2011 United States federal budget holds a substantial reduction in funding for the Electronic Government Fund, from which data.gov draws its funding; prioritization of systems supported by the Fund could lead to reduction or elimination of data.gov .[6]
For its one-year anniversary, Data.gov launched a redesigned website on May 21, 2010.[7] Its repository has grown from 47 datasets at launch to over 250,000. Jeanne Holm, formerly the Chief Knowledge Architect at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Knowledge Management team, joined Data.gov as the Communications and Collaborations Lead,[8] James Hendler, an artificial intelligence researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was named the "Internet Web Expert" and tasked with helping Data.gov exploit advanced Web technologies.
On August 13, 2010 a position was posted for "Evangelist for Data.Gov Open Government".[9][10]
The Office of Management and Budget released a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document (ConOps in Word format, ConOps in PDF format) outlining the vision, architecture and future of data.gov. As of August 31, 2010 the most recent version was 0.7 dated December 3, 2009.
The US Open Government Directive of December 8, 2009 requires that all agencies post at least three high-value data sets online and register them on data.gov within 45 days.