White House Backs Open Government Data, Seeks Open Science Champions

This week, the Obama administration announced a series of measures intended to make government and scientific data more available to the public. Key among these efforts is a new executive order requiring that future data generated by the federal government be made available in open, readable formats to the public. An accompanying memorandum instructs federal agency heads to build open data practices into their data collection activities and to develop secure data-release policies. In addition, the administration announced it was seeking nominations for notable open data and open science champions that are having an impact in their community.

In the White House announcement, the administration explicitly makes the point that open data is a key resource in spurring innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. Open and accessible government data provides opportunities to entrepreneurs to build new products and services, both by developing services based on the content of that data, and by fueling a market in making large data resources more easily accessible to the public. For instance, weather data generated by the government fuels an entire industry based on the dissemination of meteorological information. On the other hand, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum released in February (see the February 27 issue) instructing federal agencies to release to the public of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles supported with federal dollars, is intended to help stimulate new businesses based on the indexing, curating and cross-referencing of those articles.

The new open-data policy memorandum, issued by OSTP and the Office of Management and Budget, requires federal department and agencies:

• to collect information in a way conducive to open publication;
• to build information systems that support information accessibility;
• to strengthen data management and release practices;
• to take steps to ensure privacy is maintained; and,
• to incorporate the openness requirements into their core agency processes.

In addition, the administration announced it would relaunch Data.gov as a hub for the release of open data and increase their efforts to engage with entrepreneurs to make the most of these resources.

The White House Champions of Change program, which highlights individuals, businesses and organizations having a positive impact in their communities, is seeking nominations for champions of open scientific data. Potential nominees should be working on projects that are making scientific data and articles more easily available or are themselves making use of publically available scientific data. Those chosen as champions will have their projects featured on the Champions of Change webpage and be able to make announcements about new projects or expansions at the Champions event. Nominations are due May 14, 2013. Read the announcement at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/07/seeking-outstanding-open-science-champions-change.