This post comes from Doug Ward in Information Services and Meredith Stewart in the Office of Innovation.
The Open Data Policy states what we already know really well here at NARA — information is a valuable national resource and a strategic asset to the Federal Government, its partners, and the public. We see this in how you discover, use, and rely on the records of the National Archives every single day.
Mrs. Adelaide Minogue checks the status of open data at NARA
The Open Data Policy seeks to expand the number of government data assets that are open and available to the public. Those data assets that are public (or could be public) are called out in a Public Data Listing and made available on Data.gov.
We’ve launched Archives.gov/data to serve as a portal for our open data efforts and we’ve begun the creation of our Public Data Listing. In order to expand our public data listing, we need your suggestions for NARA data assets that you would like to see included.
What do we mean by “data assets”?
Data assets can be as large as a system or as small as a single dataset or online resource. We have nearly 60 data assets, including large systems like Online Public Access (OPA) and and individual datasets like the Federal Register in XML and Executive Orders in CSV. We have included Archives.gov, but we’ve also called out individual resources on Archives.gov like the online collection of ISCAP decisions.
Suggest data assets!
Take a look at what we’ve included so far in our Public Data Listing and let us know your suggestions for additional data assets in the comments below, email webprogram@nara.gov, or you can open an issue on our Github repository.