Wired Looks over Data.gov Update
I confess I’ve pretty much not been back to data.gov since it launched a year ago. But since last week was it’s birthday and since we, the citizenry had provided quite a bit of feedback on the site, Vikek Kundra and his team offered an update to celebrate.
Of note from the geospatial side…not much. The gallery is the place for maps: There’s some nice integration of Tableas software’s tools to make charts, graphs and maps in its Obesity Comparison Tool. But there are just nine apps in the gallery! The good news there?
To encourage more widespread use of the government’s data, the Obama administration recently brought on an evangelist for the program: Jeanne Holm, formerly chief knowledge architect for NASA’s jet-propulsion laboratory, whose new title is communications and collaborations lead for Data.gov.
Jeanne Holm, formerly chief knowledge architect for NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory, is the new full-time communications and collaborations lead for Data.gov.
In her new role, modeled somewhat on Kundra’s own outreach to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (which resulted in some of the most powerful uses of the government’s data to date, as you’ll see below), Holm will travel to grade schools, high schools and universities over the coming year to explain to students and teachers how they can make use of these datasets through basic science projects, in the case of younger students, and more advanced data analysis at higher educational levels.
If you are counting: “Data.gov launched with 47 datasets on May 21, 2009. On its first anniversary, Data.gov will have ballooned to more than 250,000 datasets…” I also noticed that “Web results” of searches are by Bing.
- Wired via @timoreilly
