Data.gov Copycats

Government transparency enthusiasts have launched a public-service Web site that pulls and repackages federal data - fulfilling the aim of the White House's "democratizing data" campaign.

Sunlight Labs, a spinoff of the Sunlight Foundation that develops Web applications, is trying to one-up Data.gov. The government site, which launched May 21, actually was designed to encourage such competition. Data.gov provides the public with chunks of federal data that they can repurpose online.

Labs Director Clay Johnson wrote on the Sunlight blog:

We're going to steal that idea and make it better. Because of politics and scale there's only so much the government is going to be able to do. There are legal hurdles and boundaries the government can't cross that we can. For instance, there's no legislative or judicial branch data inside Data.gov and while Data.gov links off to state data catalogs, entries aren't in the same place or format as the rest of the catalog. Community documentation and collaboration are virtual impossibilities because of the regulations that impact the way Government interacts with people on the Web.

Johnson encourages the public to contribute their own data sources to Sunlight's endeavor, which also will catalog other nonprofit statistics derived from government data, like the lobbying spending content on OpenSecrets.