Federal Data Dump Day in the U.S., Unless You’re a Science Agency

The first milestone in the Open Government Directive – the release by each federal agency of three high-quality data sets – is today.  Data.gov has a list of all Open Government Initiative data sets released today.  As I look at it, there are over 100 datasets and counting.  Those that the agencies consider high-quality are marked with an asterisk.  Many agencies came through, often with many more than three datasets (though not always three high-quality data sets).

Oddly, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, and the National Institutes of Health are not represented in today’s data dump.  Maybe there will be a last-minute entry.  Given the wealth of information in the NSF Science Statistics section, and the recent release of Science and Engineering Indicators, I’m a bit surprised they didn’t have something new to throw in.  The Office of Science and Technology Policy does have new data sets, which are collections of information on the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, and the Global Climate Change Research Program.  Even so, there are plenty of new data sets ripe for the mining, so researchers spread the word.