1. OGD: Freeing health care data

    By Nancy Watzman Mar 10, 2010 9:11 a.m.

    We're still tracking government's performance under the Open Government Directive, and we're also asking for specific information to be released. Here's the data we'd like to see on food and drug safety, which we posted over at the Department of Health and Human Services "open" Web page. The agency set up this commenting system as part of President Barack Obama's open government directive. Please take a moment to visit and vote for our suggestions. (Unfortunately the HHS comment format made our paragraphs run together and slightly truncated our comment. This is fixed below.) We'll be posting more of these at other /open pages in the coming days and weeks.

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  2. Farm Subsidies Still Missing from USDAs Data-Rich Website

    By Jim Morris Mar 5, 2010 noon

    Farm subsidies have a way of inciting people. Here, in the words of the Environmental Working Group, is why:

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  3. Pentagon Weapons Test Report Harder to Get Since 9/11

    By Nick Schwellenbach Feb 26, 2010 1:52 p.m.

    Until Sept. 11, 2001, a little-known but indispensible annual report by the Defense Department gave the public a window into whether the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent each year led to weapons that work.  Then, the reports by the Pentagons director of Operational Test and Evaluation were pulled from the website.

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  4. FDA Lags USDA in Accessible Food Safety Data

    By Jim Morris Feb 15, 2010 5:13 p.m.

    Salmonella in peanut butter. E. coli in cookie dough. Tainted Serrano peppers. Fetid Chinese seafood. All these recent problems fell within the domain of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which shares food inspection responsibilities with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA inspects meat, poultry and some egg products while the FDA monitors everything else. Food-safety advocates say the USDA is more forthcoming about its inspection activities and are prodding the FDA to do better.

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  5. OGD: Commerce repackages old data and offers broken links

    By Sarah Dorsey Jan 28, 2010 2:34 p.m.

    To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Commerce Department released four high value datasets that require considerable technical sophistication on the part of users--and patience. Some of the files are so large and cumbersome they're very difficult to open and use;  others require a great deal of explanation--and you can currently only find those explanations by digging through the agency's site. Still other entries feature broken links or only contain a fraction of the information described on Data.gov. The Commerce Department says they're working on all of these problems, so hopefully we'll see an improvement in the coming days.

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  6. OGD: Defense releases what it already releases

    By Lisa Chiu Jan 26, 2010 5:17 p.m.

    To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Defense Department designated three high-value datasets last week, among them a listing of those requesting more transparency from the Pentagon. DoD released details on the 4,000 Freedom of Information requests it has received as well as datasets with information on service members gender and race, U.S. state, and marriage statistics.

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  7. OGD: High value...er, never mind

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 26, 2010 2:46 p.m.

    Data.gov has apparently changed its mind about which datasets are high value. When datasets were released on Friday, the 2007-2008 State-to-State Migration Outflow file released by the Department of Treasury was designated high value--an asterisk appeared next to its entry in the raw data catalog on data.gov. Today that asterisk is gone. This would leave treasury one high value data set short of the three required by the Open Government Directive. But dont worry, they've added another. The dataset titled, Tax Year 2007 County Income Data, has been placed in the list and given an asterisk. What isn't shared with the public in this instance is the day it was released. The entry only says January 2010, while all other datasets identify the day as well.

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  8. Surveying the first fruits of the open government directive

    By Bill Allison Jan 25, 2010 5:48 p.m.

    We're still surveying those high value data sets released as part of the open government directive--there are hundreds of files to sift through, which is obviously a good thing. But while we don't have a final analysis done, a few trends are becoming apparent.

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  9. OGD: Justice

    By Luke Rosiak Jan 22, 2010 8:10 p.m.

    Radiation Exposure Compensation Program tallies per state from the Justice Department are pretty straightforward, but still intriguing. Manhattan Project fallout--so to speak--sixty years after the fact for these Los Alamos neighbors?

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  10. OGD: IRS migration data doesn't capture everyone

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 22, 2010 7:34 p.m.

    The Department of Treasury's release of IRS migration data immediately made me want to see for myself what Hurricane Katrina's effect on Lousiana's population was. The data is state and county level and based on tax returns.

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  11. OGD: EPA visualizes the Chesapeake Bay's problems

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 22, 2010 6:57 p.m.

    The Environmental Protection agency is highlighting their Chesapeake Bay water quality database. The site has some pretty cool visualizations of water temperature and salinity changes over time. The 3-D graphics make it easy to see the drastic changes the bay has undergone in recent years.

  12. OGD: A quick look at data from Treasury and Education

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 22, 2010 6:22 p.m.

    The high value dataset released by the Department of Treasury seems important, but might not be as valuable as it could be because of banking industry practices.  Its also not new. The dataset in question is called the Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives and its produced by the Office of the Comptroller and Currency.

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  13. HHS releases Electronic Animal Drug Product Listing Directory

    By Bill Allison Jan 22, 2010 6:02 p.m.

    In 2007, Congress required the Food and Drug Administration to maintain an online database of drugs administered to animals, and get it online by June 2009. The Electronic Animal Drug Product Listing Directory does just that; this previously published data set (it's available on the FDA's site here) is one of the high value data sets released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

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  14. OGD: Labor releases open government page

    By Anupama Narayanswamy Jan 22, 2010 3:34 p.m.

    The Department of Labor is one of the few agencies that has its "/open" page up and running as part of the Open Government Directive. One of the datasets they have featured as a high value dataset is the "weekly reports of fatalities, catastrophes and other events." The data, compiled by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, briefly describes workplace accidents, identifies the company at which and the date when the accident occurred; the data can be downloaded as a csv file. Although this dataset is available on Labor's Web site, it doesnt seem to be uploaded on the data.gov Web site yet.

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