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What features do you want for your catalog of govt data?

Data is definitely getting sexy. Jonathan Gray of the Open Knowledge Foundation asks “What features should be included in a catalogue of open government data?” and points to a few other data repositories being built on the state and country level (like my own city of SF’s CivicDB!). He also mentions the Sunlight Foundation’s plan to build on and expand data.gov with a national data catalog that I had meant to write about a couple of weeks ago (go Sunlight!). So I’m putting this question to you, FGI’s faithful readers. I’m sure you’ll have a thing or three to add to the list of requirements for open data catalogs.


Here are a few suggestions for those building catalogues for (open) government data based on our experience developing CKAN:

  • Make the catalogue itself open!
  • Let others download the catalogue data in bulk (not just via an API)
  • Include information on how to get the data, and how it can be used
  • Make it versioned!

[originally tweeted by @EllnMllr. Go ahead and follow her!]

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