We’ve been watching the schema.org datasets schema space for a while now, as Data.gov is very interested in adding schema.org support for our listing of over 450,000 datasets. We think this will help the major search engines create better relevance rankings of Federal government data, where many searches begin.
Making environmental data available for reuse by others is a core strategy EPA uses to help meet its mission of protecting human health and safeguarding the environment. EPA has a long tradition of publishing data – notable examples include Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data, as well as Envirofacts – a data warehouse that provides public access to data extracts from Agency program information systems. EPA is also helping to support data discovery through the
Recently, I took some time to do a little analysis of our geospatial metadata in geo.data.gov. The results are extremely interesting, and they highlight a difficult challenge facing Data.gov as we work towards improving ways that our users search for and discover Federal geospatial datasets, which rely heavily on the quality of our metadata.
Through my travels working on Linked Data projects in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and collaborating with other federal agencies pursuing Linked Data through Data.gov's semantic community, we frequently leverage the work of many talented international contributors to the Linked Data community. It turns out that many of them share something in common–often they're affiliated with the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI).
Like our ongoing collaboration with RPI's Tetherless World Constellation, the Linked Data rock stars at DERI deserve some Data.gov love for the great work they do, and the many contributions they have and continue to make. Their work touches so many aspects of those in the US who, like me, are in the business of helping to realize Government Linked Data, in conjunction with voluntary consensus standards organizations like the W3C, which is of course central to this open data mission. This post in an overview of just some of the ways we appreciate DERI.
Note: This is a guest blog post from developer Luke Ruth (see "About the author" at the end of this post) on mashing up Government Linked Data, leveraging Facilities Registry data from the EPA and Hospital Compare data from HHS. Luke is a welcome addition to the Data.gov/semantic community of practice!
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As an undergraduate studying Computer Information Systems and Psychology at University of Mary Washington, I recently had the opportunity to perform a senior project on using open government content and Linked Data principles.
