Requesting Datasets from the Federal Government by Eruditio Loginquitas.
From the post:
Much has been made of “open government” of late, with the U.S.’s federal government releasing tens of thousands of data sets from pretty much all public-facing offices. Many of these sets are available off of their respective websites. Many are offered in a centralized way at DATA.gov. I finally spent some time on this site in search of datasets with location data to continue my learning of Tableau Public (with an eventual planned move to ArcMap).
I’ve been appreciating how much data are required to govern effectively but also how much data are created in the work of governance, particularly in an open and transparent society. There are literally billions of records and metrics required to run an efficient modern government. In a democracy, the tendency is to make information available—through sunshine laws and open meetings laws and data requests. The openness is particularly pronounced in cases of citizen participation, academic research, and journalistic requests. These are all aspects of a healthy interchange between citizens and their government…and further, digital government.
Public Requests for Data
One of the more charming aspects of the site involves a public thread which enables people to make requests for the creation of certain data sets by developers. People would make the case for the need for certain information. Some would offer “trades” by making promises about how they would use the data and what they would make available to the larger public. Others would simply make a request for the data. Still others would just post “requests,” which were actually just political or personal statements. (The requests site may be viewed here: https://explore.data.gov/nominate?&page;=1 .)
What datasets would you like to see?
The rejected requests can interesting, for example:
Properties Owned by Congressional Members Rejected
Congressional voting records Rejected
I don’t think the government has detailed information sufficient to answer the one about property owned by members of Congress.
On the other hand there are only 535 members so manual data mining in each state should turn up most of the public information fairly easily. The not public information could be more difficult.
The voting records request is puzzling since that is public record. And various rant groups print up their own analysis of voting records.
I don’t know, given the number of requests “Under Review” if it would be a good use of time but requesting the data behind opaque reports might illuminate the areas being hidden from transparency.