Published 28 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3983
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3983

News

US government opens up online datasets

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Transparency, participation, and collaboration are the three principles driving the Obama administration’s effort to open up federal information to the public, the White House’s deputy chief technology officer, Beth Noveck, has said.

Speaking at a forum at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, on 24 September, she said that an integral part of that effort is the new website www.data.gov, a portal for "the massive release of data in open, downloadable, machine readable format across all agencies." She called it "a commitment to open data and open information . . . accountability through algorithm."

Vivek Kundra, the US federal chief information officer, said the purpose of the website "is to democratise data across the federal government" and to "unlock the value of the data in the public sector."

However, one major challenge is that datasets that individually may not compromise national security or individual privacy might do . . . [Full text of this article]


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