White Paper: Open for Whom? An Overview of Data.Gov File Formats

  • By David Morar
  • 27 March, 2016
  • Comments Off on White Paper: Open for Whom? An Overview of Data.Gov File Formats

The data catalogs available on the US Government’s flagship open government platform, data.gov are numerous and highly diverse. So diverse, in fact, that a question arises from a preliminary look at the availability and number of file formats: Who is the intended audience?

The study released today, titled “Open for whom? An overview of data.gov file formats”, puts forth nuanced conclusions and robust conversation-starters. Using an established hierarchy and sorting the formats against the “structure” and “access” dimensions, we find a rather high number of PDF and HTML files, but also a significant number of more complex formats.

Another concern stems from the large proportion of the files that are in an unknown or obscure format. The findings highlight an apparent confusion on not just the intended audience and purpose of government open data, but also on best practices for formatting and releasing files. The full report with more information on this issue  is available here.
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