Data.gov
Empowering People
Semantic Web
As the Semantic Web (sometimes called Web 3.0) emerges, the US government is pleased to be in the vanguard of this new technology space. To this end, Data.gov is hosting demonstrations and documents that will help familiarize Data.gov users with this new technology, and that will let citizens and developers work with the government in creating a new generation of "linked data" mash ups.
Data.gov now hosts a set of Resource Description Framework (RDF) documents containing triples created by converting a number of the Data.gov datasets into this format, making over 6.4 billion triples of open government data available to the community. An index of all the RDF documents on Data.gov is here.
The URI scheme chosen is a very simple one for the time being, designed to allow users to easily explore and extend the data. A proposal is being developed with RPI, one of the Data.gov community leaders, for a new encoding of datasets converted from CSV (and other formats) to RDF. We're looking forward to a design discussion to determine the best scheme for persistent and dereferenceable government URI naming with the international community and the World Wide Web Consortium to promote international standards for persistent government data (and metadata) on the World Wide Web.
Innovations at RPI
Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET)
TThis map shows the ozone levels across the U.S. Clicking on a dot brings up detailed information about the ozone measurements for that area over time. The ozone values shown are taken from dataset 8, "Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET); Ozone" released by the Environmental Protection Agency. The faceted browsing in this demo uses the Exhibit framework developed by the Simile Project at MIT.
Public Company Bankruptcy Cases Opened and Monitored for Fiscal Year 2009
This demonstration shows public company bankruptcies for fiscal year 2009 based on dataset 1580 released by the Securities and Exchange Commission . The map shows the ratio of total debt over assets from all bankrupt cases at each state level. Clicking on a state displays details of those public companies that filed bankruptcies within this state, e.g. the company name, assets, and liabilities.
State Library Agency Survey: Fiscal Year 2006
This demonstration displays the ratio of the number of book volumes (available per state and aggregated over all public libraries) to the population of that state. This data comes from dataset 353 released by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Broadband Adoption Urban Vs Rural in 2009
This demo shows the percentage of households in each state with broadband Internet access, out of the total number of (urban and rural) households with home Internet access. The percentage is computed by urban home broadband + rural home broadband / urban home total + urban home total.
US Global Aid
This application presents historical foreign aid data (ranging from 1951 to 2008) from three branches of the US Government: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Agriculture and the Department of State. Users may retrieve foreign aid data for specific countries by clicking on the provided world map (shaded based on total foreign aid received). Upon clicking on a desired country, three kinds of information are presented: Aid Figures, News Articles (retrieved through the New York Times Article Search API), and the CIA World Fact book. This mashup is hosted at RPI.
