Here is a point-by-point comparison of the big new data dissemination initiatives by the U.S. and the U.K.:

• Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov. Flowing Data (Feb 4, 2010).

While Data.gov.uk was just recently launched publicly, it has many advantages over Data.gov. It's easier to use and geared towards developers, who, let's face it, are the only ones who are going to do more with the data than open it up in Excel. Data.gov has some catching up to do. Both still have a long way to go. Both are good steps in the right direction.

Hat tip to Kevin Taglang at Benton Foundation!

White House bars agencies from posting some statistics, by Aliya Sternstein, NextGov (01/27/2010).

According to this article, datasets posted to data.gov by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Peace Corps, the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation, and the Social Security Administration have been removed by the Office of Management and Budget "because they raised privacy, security or other concerns."

The article is based on work done by OpenTheGovernment.org which is tracking agency participation with the Open Government Directive here.

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!]

Our friends over at Sunlight Labs have announced a new project they call that "National Data Catalog" that will build on data.gov:

Today I’m happy to announce Sunlight Labs is stealing an idea from our government. Data.gov is an incredible concept, and the implementation of it has been remarkable. 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.

We think we can add value on top of things like Data.gov and the municipal data catalogs by autonomously bringing them into one system, manually curating and adding other data sources and providing features that, well, Government just can’t do. There’ll be community participation so that people can submit their own data sources, and we’ll also catalog non-commercial data that is derivative of government data like OpenSecrets. We’ll make it so that people can create their own documentation for much of the undocumented data that government puts out and link to external projects that work with the data being provided.

If you're interested in helping out on this effort, please join the National Data Catalog Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/datacatalog?lnk=gcamv.

Sunlight Labs has an update on the status of data.gov:

Data.gov gets an update, by Clay, Sunlight Labs, June 19 2009.

Data.gov has given itself a slight upgrade, adding a bunch more feeds. To compensate, Data.gov has turned itself into three subcatalogs: A raw data catalog, a tool catalog and a geodata catalog.

The good folks at Sunlight Labs have written a brief overview of how they think a "data.gov" web site would look and function.

• Redesigning the Government: Data.gov, by Clay, Sunlight Labs, April 16 2009.

...we thought we’d actually take the opportunity to design data.gov right off the bat to show you all what we’d like to see happen.

As we noted last month, the Federal government is moving forward with their plans for a May launch of data.gov. US CIO Vivek Kundra has said that this is an attempt to ensure that all government data 'that is not restricted for national security reasons can be made public' through data feeds. And just to remind everyone, Wired has launched a wiki for calling attention to datasets that should be shared as part of the Data.gov plan. Please go to the wiki and add those data sets that are near and dear to your hearts!

that is all.

Over at the Wired magazine "How-to wiki," there is a page about making government data more easily available.

• Open Up Government Data [wiki], Wired How-To Wiki, Based on work by Alexis Madrigal.

It looks like it is specifically oriented toward statistical information, numeric data, and other surveys that collect information; ("The numbers — about how much corn we grow, what the universe looks like from Hubble, how much coal we have, and how well drugs work — are the results from the grand experiment of this country"). But it is already including documents (like technical reports).

The purpose of the wiki?

We've established this wiki to help focus attention on valuable data resources that need to be made more accessible or usable. Do you know of a legacy dataset in danger of being lost? How about a set of Excel (or — shudder — Lotus 1-2-3) spreadsheets that would work better in another format? Data locked up in PDF's?

This is your place to report where government data is locked up by design, neglect or misapplication of technology. We want you to point out the government data that you need or would like to have. Get involved!

Based on what you contribute here, we'll follow up with government agencies to see what their plans are for that data — and track the results of the emerging era of Data.gov.

With your help, we can combine the best of new social media and old-school journalism to get more of the data we've already paid for in our hands.

From the look of it, I'd say that the folks who designed this page are not familiar with the many existing sources of government data, but that's just a guess. Nevertheless, I think this is worth monitoring and I hope that librarians contribute to it. (It's easy! "Just jump in and edit the wiki. Add links to data that's out of date or in danger of being forgotten or that comes stored in a less-than-ideal format. Help define how Data.gov gets built by making sure that the data you need is included." And... "If you're not comfortable with the MediaWiki formatting language, feel free to get in touch with Wired.com staff writer, Alexis Madrigal, either by e-mail alexis.madrigal[at]gmail.com or on Twitter: @alexismadrigal.)

They note:

We're not writing a policy paper here. We're trying to highlight datasets and sources of knowledge that the new Administration — and it's open-data friendly CIO — could make more widely available and accessible with small, concrete actions.

Already on the list: Economic Research Service, ClinicalTrials.gov, creating a data catalog of every agency's data streams, "View Data Release From the User's Point of View, not the Agency's", and more.

It also lists "Models for Government Data Release, Transparency" such as ESDIS (Earth Science Data and Information System Project at Goddard).