I’m sad to see Data.gov go, but it seems dozens of small startups are rising up to take its place as sources of freely availably public data. This week is the Data2.0 conference, and it seems that without really meaning to, the Focus of the event will be the collapse of Data.gov.
Yet, not all is lost: there are over 50 startups at the Data 2.0 Conference which specifically aim to make data accessible and useful with or without Data.gov.
As Nick Ducoff, CEO of InfoChimps, wrote:
“It would be very helpful if the government would devote its limited resources on simply pointing us to public data sets wherever they live in the wild. Socrata, Infochimps and others can do the rest of the heavy lifting (appending metadata, making the data findable, etc.). [U.S. CIO] Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and others have been great cheerleaders for open data and I hope this doesn’t take the wind out of their sails.”
Several of the early-stage data startups pitching at the Data 2.0 Pitch Day (including DataMarket.com, Envirogent.org, opencorporates.com, opensignalmaps.com, and micello.com) are themselves new data sources giving businesses and consumers better access to data.
Hopefully the many startups using Data.gov as their primary source of data can switch to these other companies, and hopefully they will all embrace the same goals of open and transparent access to the data.
via As Data.gov Goes Dark, 50 Startups Prepare to Take its Place | Smart Data Collective.
