Tag: data

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Data.gov celebrates first birthday!

Since it’s launch a year ago,  Data.gov, which has a mandate to globally democratize data,  has  undergone a makeover.  There are new opportunities to interact with the data as well as new feature such as usage statistics and apps featuring  crime statistics by neighborhood to the best towns to find a job to seeing the environmental health of your community.

“Launched in May 2009 with 47 datasets, Data.gov has been continually expanded since the inception of the Open Government Directive (OGD).  Under the OGD, published Dec. 8, 2009, executive branch agencies had 45 days to release at least three “high-value” datasets on their websites and register them with Data.gov. These datasets were to be information “not previously available online or in a downloadable format” and were to be published “online in an open format.”  On the deadline, the website held about 300 datasets in total but now boasts of a library containing more than 270,000 sets.” — OMB Watch

Some of the most viewed datasets include:

  1. Worldwide M1+ Earthquakes, Past 7 Days
  2. U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook)
  3. MyPyramid Food Raw Data
  4. Latest Volumes of Foreign Relations of the US
  5. OSHA Data Initiative – Establishment…

Both OMB Watch and Free Government Information have interesting posts.

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Aid Data & Google Maps: New Free Resources

Thanks to Christina from David Lam library whose eagle-eye spotted these two new resources!

1) AidData is a database of data and information on foreign aid finance.  It just went live this week, and while still in Beta, contains over 1 million records.   “AidData attempts to capture the universe of development finance, increase the value of data by providing more descriptive information about development activities, provide data in an accessible format, and strengthen efforts to improve donor and recipient strategic planning and coordination.”

You can search by keyword within different databases covering: donor information, recipients (ie, countries or regions), purpose, activity and years.

2) Google has teamed up with the US Census Bureau to develop a new mapping tool which will allow you to track mail participation rates in the 2010 US Census.  You can view the “Take 10 Challenge Map” on the US Census Website here. Just type in a town/city and its state or type in a zipcode to see the current participation rate and the rate for the 2000 Census.  Note, as the Census has only just launched there is not much data below the state level.  Check back in a few weeks to see figures for smaller geographic units.

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Update: Google Public Data Explorer

We noted Google’s public data search feature in a November 2009 post and today we have an update for you.  Google Labs has just launched “an experimental visualization tool” called Google Public Data Explorer – designed to “help people comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations.  With the Data Explorer, you can mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts.”

Google data providers are the World Bank, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau, the OECD, the California Dept of Education, Eurostat, the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, so the Explorer has the potential to deliver high quality statistics on a vast array of socio-economic topics and for most geographic regions of the world.  Click here for more information about this resource from the Google Labs blog.

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American Community Survey- Latest Release

The US Census Bureau conducts an official census every 10 years, with the next one coming up in March 2010.  In between years the Bureau conducts a variety of smaller-scale nationwide surveys, including the American Community Survey (ACS).  The ACS is sent to approximately 3 million households.  The most recent 3 year estimates based on surveys conducted from 2005 – 2008 have just been released for public use.

“The ACS collects information such as age, race, income, commute time to work, home value, veteran status, and other important data…. These 3-year estimates are available annually for geographic areas with a population of 20,000 or more, including the nation, all states and the District of Columbia, all congressional districts, approximately 1,800 counties, and 900 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, among others.”

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American Community Survey Data 2006 – 2008

The US Census Bureau has just released new data:

“on a wide range of socioeconomic, housing and demographic characteristics for communities across the nation, part of an ongoing statistical portrait of America.

Among dozens of topics covered in the survey are educational attainment, commute times, housing characteristics, occupation, language ability and various other social, economic and housing topics.”

The data are available from the American FactFinder website at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_submenuId=&_lang=en&_ts=

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Data Visualizer at the World Bank

The World Bank has just launched a new website that features a “publicly accessible tool for data visualization,”  called the Data Visualizer.

“The time series used in Data Visualizer is a subset of 2009 World Development Indicators database. It contains 49 indicators for 209 countries and 18 aggregates from 1960-2007. Data includes social, economic, financial, information & technology, and environmental indicators.”

Basically, countries or economic regions are represented as brightly coloured bubbles on a chart and you can choose from a list of variables for both the x and the y axis.  The bubbles move around as you drag the time slider across the bottom of the chart – representing change over time.   If you play around with the Visualizer you can probably figure out the basics of using it and interpreting the data, but apparently there are more advanced features that you might miss.  Fortunately the World Bank has also put together a freely downloadable  instructional video for users that will allow you to maximize this great free tool.

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Another government data mash-up: Australia

The Australian government has just launched a free website offering up a wide array of government datasets.  Topics include business, community, education, geography, transportation,  society,  safety and the environment.   You can search the database or browse by category or latest added.

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New apps for US Government data

Sunlight Labs – “a non-profit, non partisan Washington, DC based organization focused on digitization of government data” has been running a contest to identify the top three websites offering applications that provide “easy access and understanding for the public” to US government data/information.  They all make it just a bit easier to access high quality data online.

The winners are:

First Prize: DataMasher.  This website allows you to select from a wide variety of data sets (mostly from Data.gov) and to then combine them into a personalized “mashup.”  Mashups take the form of tables and maps.   Examples of recent mashups are Health Care Coverage + Premiums; Unemployment + State Land Area; and Median Household Income + Median Monthly Mortgage Costs.

Second Prize:  GovPulse.  As mentioned in another blog entry below…this site provides a single search interface for all issues of the US Federal Register, from 1994 to present.

Third Prize: ThisWeKnow: This site provides access to “nationwide data sets from six different agencies in the data.gov catalog.”  In practice, users browse or search for specific American communities and then view a list of fast facts about those communities.  ThisWeKnow then provides links to the underlying data for each fast fact.

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Data.gov

Here’s another one-stop statistics search tool – this time from the Executive Branch of the US Federal Government.  “…Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added…”  Visitors to the site are encouraged to forward suggestions for future content.

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Social Science Data Search at Berkeley

The Doe & Moffitt Libraries at the University of California, Berkeley have recently launched a Google Custom Search engine on site that “targets 800+ academic, government agency, non-profit, and other web sites that provide high quality, downloadable statistical information and data sets. Emphasis is on data pertaining to the social sciences, health, developing countries, energy, natural resources, and the environment.”

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