Open Knowledge

United States 64% open

United States is ranked #8 in the 2015 Index
United States's overall Index ranking is no change from #8 in 2014

Rank Dataset Breakdown Location (URL) Format Info Prev. (2014) Score
1 National Statistics
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http://www.census.gov/ XLS, ... #1  100% 100%
1 National Statistics
URL: http://www.census.gov/
Format: XLS, CSV, PDF, HTML, RTF

Census.gov has data on a wide variety of national statistics including all major demographic and economic indicators (population, GDP etc etc). Tabular data is generally provided in machine-readable formats such as Excel (an open format such as CSV would be preferable but we still consider this acceptable). The data is also available "in bulk" in the sense that ther e are complete files plus data is available via automated access on an FTP site at http://www2.census.gov/ (where CSV files are often available). One point to note is that there are other sources of such data within the US government including the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://bea.gov), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://bls.gov/) etc.

The data are openly licensed.


1 Procurement tenders
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https://catalog.data.gov/datas... XML n/a 100%
1 Procurement tenders
URL: https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/federal-business-opportunities-data
Format: XML

In addition, here is the link to the GSA eLibrary that provides contract award / acquisition information. Here is the link to System of Award Management (SAM)’s public data access page that shows who is registered to do business with the federal government.


1 National Map
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http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/... shapefiles #1  100% 100%
1 National Map
URL: http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/
Format: shapefiles

Use The National Map Viewer and Download Platform to visualize, inspect, and download our most current topographic base map data and products for free. Managed by the USGS National Geospatial Program (NGP), the National Map Viewer provides access to all eight primary data themes of The National Map to include US Topo and historical topographic map products. The viewer platform is extended upon the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's (NGA) Palanterra x3 Viewer. Data include: Elevation, Orthoimagery, Hydrography, Geographic Names, Boundaries, Transportation, Structures, and Land Cover, while products include: US Topo and Historical Topo Maps. The National Map Viewer also allows visualization and identification queries (but not downloads) of Other Featured Data, to include Scanned Topo Maps, Ecosystems, Protected Areas, Gap Analysis Program Land Cover, Wetlands, Public Land Survey System, and National Park Service Boundaries. Also included is a Natural Hazards panel to view hazards-related information, such as for earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and weather, along with the U.S. National Grid for emergency response. Observation: expert review was done on 27th and 28th of November and on both dates the map viewer did not load on Chrome and Firefox.


1 Legislation
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http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkd... XML #1  100% 100%
1 Legislation
URL: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLS
Format: XML

The link provided is to bulk XML data for United States Code provided by Office of the Law Revision Counsel for US House of Representatives. Data made available since July 2013 (see this announce http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/opengov-house-representatives-makes-us-code-available-bulk-xml).

Regarding open licensing we assume that the US Code is public domain. In addition no copyright assertion is mentioned on the site and the congress.gov site is run by the Library of Congress and one would anticipate is subject to standard public domain provisions (though there is a legal section whose copyright portion is unfortunately rather unenlightening - http://beta.congress.gov/legal/#copyright).

There is a variety of additional (machine-readable) data from a variety of sources not least the new Congress.gov website (which will be completely replacing http://thomas.loc.gov/ from November 2013). Other resources include: - Bulk data from the GPO in XML format including Congressional Bills, Commerce Business Daily etc. (Does not seem to be updated since Jan 2013). Announced Jan 10 2013 - see http://www.gpo.gov/pdfs/news-media/press/13news01.pdf - The full US Code on the GPO at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collectionUScode.action?collectionCode=USCODE (PDF) - The Federal Register https://www.federalregister.gov/ which includes "Regulations are issued by federal agencies, boards, or commissions [which] explain how [an] agency intends to carry out a law." (Data is provided in HTML, CSV and JSON and there is a full API - see https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/api/v1 and https://www.federalregister.gov/blog/learn/developers) - Resources listed on http://speaker.gov/open including http://docs.house.gov/ (which includes XML versions of laws being considered) and House floor activities at http://clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor-download.aspx In addition it is worth noting various unofficial sites that provide excellent material such as: - https://www.govtrack.us/ - http://opencongress.org/ It may also be interesting to read how expensive some of this material once was, see e.g. Carl Malamud's comments in http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/bulk-data-downloads-government-transparency-breakthrough.html


1 Pollutant Emissions
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http://www3.epa.gov/airdata/ CSV #13  70% 100%
1 Pollutant Emissions
URL: http://www3.epa.gov/airdata/
Format: CSV

Another site of the epa only for pm vale http://www3.epa.gov/airtrends/pm.html i didnt see VOCs measurement but i think it shold be in NATTS (National Air Toxics Trends Stations) that dont look to work in this time

On open licenses: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Government_use_of_Creative_Commons#Federal Note: "Works by the US federal government are automatically part of the public domain in the US"


1 Government Budget
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/... XLS, ... #1  100% 100%
1 Government Budget
URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/
Format: XLS, CSV, PDF

Current budget is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/. Formal budget documents are in PDF format and are on http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview. Machine-readable data in Excel and CSV files can be found in the supplemental material at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Supplemental.

Furthermore, the Whitehouse.gov copyright notice states all material is CC-By (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright).

Bulk: Whilst the data is split across multiple files there is a good core set of data in the "Public Budget Database" which consists of only 3 substantial CSV files. As such, have marked Bulk as "Yes"

  • Machine-readable: whilst formal budget is PDF we believe that all relevant data is contained in the Excel and CSV files so Machine-readable is "Yes" (note also that the CSV files are well formatted)

  • Older budgets: the OMB budget site only contains data for the latest budget with past budgets available on the GPO website at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collectionGPO.action?collectionCode=BUDGET. The GPO site only provides PDFs. However, the OMB site does contain a historical tables section at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals and the Public Budget Database contains data back to 1962.


12 Location datasets
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https://www.census.gov/geo/map... txt #8  90% 90%
12 Location datasets
URL: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazetteer2015.html
Format: txt

This dataset in the US presents some challenges as there is a mixture of data available.

The US Census provide zip-code centroids as part of their 2010 Gazetteer located at http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazetteer2010.html in the form of the Zip-Code Tabulation Areas:

http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/docs/gazetteer/Gaz_zcta_national.zip

This data is open data (openly licensed, and machine readable etc).

However, there are some limitations of this data as it is based off the census, the last of which was in 2010. Thus, over time this database gets out of date versus the authoritative data held by the USPS. Given this, the data is marked as not timely.

In addition, the ZCTA isn’t as complete as the USPS zip-code list as it focused on geographical areas and so its coverage of e.g. PO boxes is more limited. However, given the specifications of this dataset this should not be considered a major limitation and so we have not docked points anywhere else.

More on Zip-Codes and the USPS

The full database of zip codes from the USPS has not yet been found although it looks like products are available for sale, and they are multiple datasets that can help to provide a whole picture.

The ZCTA file produced by the US Census Bureau is useful but is not the full USPS Database of Zip Codes and lookup tables. Instead, this is a census related product produced every 10 years.

"You may have noticed that Census Bureau products refer to “ZIP Code tabulation areas (ZCTAs)” and not simply to ZIP Codes™. The reason that we cannot tabulate data for ZIP Codes is that they do not have distinct geographic boundaries. Designed by the U.S. Postal Service for use in mail delivery, ZIP Codes represent carrier routes made up of individual addresses. A true representation of ZIP Codes would separate out individual housing units and releasing data for them would risk disclosing personally identifiable information". https://ask.census.gov/faq.php?id=5000&faqId=10488

The ZCTAs are not the same as the (regularly updated) USPS postal code lookup files or the postal code database with addresses and Lat Long. Those data are for sale and a number of USPS services are resold.

There is an USPS API for companies to integrate their their systems - https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/address-information-api.htm Some date exchange for companies - https://www.usps.com/postalone/program.htm Segmentation direct mail tools https://www.usps.com/business/pdf/Segmentation_WP.pdf Lots of info about databases and services - https://about.usps.com/publications/pub32/pub32_terms.htm and lots of private sector tools such as http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code-database.asp?gclid=CLG5_NWPncICFWSK2wodgIQAnA

In addition, there are also some crosswalk files made by HUDs and posted on data.gov http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/hud-usps-zip-code-crosswalk-files


13 Weather forecast
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http://graphical.weather.gov/x... XML n/a 70%
13 Weather forecast
URL: http://graphical.weather.gov/xml/
Format: XML

Forecast data is available at the link above.

Historical/climate data is available here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets

There are some online and some offline data. The ones that are offline need to be ordered by mailing NCEI. All that is online can be downloaded for free but what is offline needs to be ordered and “most offline services require an additional charge." Also in order to “certify” data records in the case that they are used in court, there might be further costs.

Unsure if most of it is online but there definitely exists offline data. Here are places to look for online data: a. Dataset Gallery of NOAA; b. Quick links to many of NCEI’s datasets on weather/climate; c. Operational Climate Data Records; d. Climate Data: Dataset Discovery

Yes, openly licensed because it goes with the World Meteorological Organization Resolution, which means non-US info cannot be used for commercial use; international data can be used within the US or for noncommercial international uses without any restrictions.


15 Water Quality
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n/a n/a n/a 50%
15 Water Quality


On openly-licensed: "USGS-authored or produced data and information are considered to be in the U.S. public domain. While the content of most USGS Web pages is in the U.S. public domain, not all information, illustrations, or photographs on our site are. Some non USGS photographs, images, and/or graphics that appear on USGS Web sites are used by the USGS with permission from the copyright holder. These materials are generally marked as being copyrighted. To use these copyrighted materials, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder under the copyright law."

This website also does not seem to show fecal coliform, arsenic levels, nor total dissolved solids.

Some data sets were downloadable (in .txt) but others weren't. Not sure if they were in bulk because I had to use a search engine rather than download a complete data set.


8 Government Spending
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n/a n/a #15  10% 10%
8 Government Spending


The Bureau of the Fiscal Service relaunched USAspending.gov in March 2015 with data from October 1, 2008 to present. Agencies are required to submit data files within 30 days after making an award or after making a modification/transaction to an award, except for the DoD which delays its submission by 90 days. Download data in various formats at https://www.usaspending.gov/DownloadCenter/Pages/DataDownload.aspx

These still only represent contracts, grants, loans and other fiancial assistance.


71 Company Register
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n/a n/a #66  15% 10%
71 Company Register


In the US, corporate registration happens at the state level. The timeliness, availability, and licensing of this data varies among all 50 states. There is no federal dataset that contains all corporate registrations. It would be possible to create a unified open registry for all US corporations (even if only via aggregation from state ones) but this does not exist at this time.

Across those states performance varies widely and in many cases data is not available in bulk, is not machine readable, is not openly licensed etc. For more detail, see the per state summary on Open Corporates.


83 Election Results
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n/a n/a #22  70% 5%
83 Election Results


Data prior to 2004 is not machine readable although recent results are; marked as "machine readable" as this is the present data and direction of travel. Numbers are for "primary, runoff and general election results for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and, when applicable, U.S. President." They are "obtained from each state’s election office and other official sources." Raw data for the 2000, 2004, and 2008, 2012 Presidential General Elections are also available through the National Atlas.

For elections on the state, local and territory level, please see the Combined Federal/State Disclosure and Election Directory. It provides contact information and links to the elections offices of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Also, see the efforts to standardize local government election data being conducted by: http://openelections.net/


85 Land Ownership
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n/a n/a n/a 0%
85 Land Ownership


It does not seem that federal / national government has a database... The Bureau of Land Management has a pretty antiquated website that does not have a great cadastre survey page. There is a company that sells parcel-level data, and a client they note is the government. The state of Montana has a pretty good cadastre map and Oregon something similar but I don’t think there is a national map that has all the aggregated cadastre maps.


Contributors

Reviewers

  • Tracey P. Lauriault
  • Georg Neumann
  • Daniela Mattern
  • Gil Zaretzer
  • Katelyn Rogers
  • Kamil Gregor
  • Neal Bastek
  • Mor Rubinstein
  • Zach Christensen
  • anonymous
  • Nisha Thompson
  • Rebecca Sentance
  • Tryggvi Björgvinsson
  • Codrina Maria Ilie

Submitters

  • Daniela Mattern
  • Rufus Pollock
  • Blessing Jee
  • Mor Rubinstein
  • Rebecca Williams - XFB
  • anonymous
  • Tracey P. Lauriault