Deadline For Data.gov Arrives, and Delivers

inKubus writes "According to a story carried by AP, as part of President Barack Obama's 'Open Government Directive,' the 24 major departments and agencies that make up the executive branch of the federal government had until Friday to release at least three 'high-value' data sets. Over 300 new data sets have been released on data.gov. There's a lot of interesting stuff on there and more to come." One of the departments required to release data is the office of the US Trade Representative. Wouldn't it be nice if they posted the ACTA negotiating drafts?

We gave US the Beatles and all we got was data.gov

[theodp]

guardian.co.uk: We gave the US the Beatles and all we got back was this lousy data.gov site... [guardian.co.uk]

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if they posted the ACTA neg

[Charliemopps]

Republicans hide the truth, Democrats just flat out lie. It always amazes me to watch each new generation hit their 20s and think 1 party is going to fix all the evil of the other... only to find out 8 years later they had the same plan all along. Tax the fuck out of you and hold onto power. They have no other goal.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if they posted the ACTA neg

[CrimsonAvenger]

And they would have, if the Republicans had ever shown one bit of being willing to debate. When a major political party's response is "no, just no, I don't care what we said we'd say yes to, we're saying no even if you take our 2004 platform and make it your health care reform", there really isn't any debate to broadcast.

If that's all it was, they'd have been delighted to televise the debate, since it would have made the Republicans look really bad.

Personally, I believe they didn't televise the debate because they really didn't want to show the House and Senate leadership bribing their own side to vote for the bills. After all, if the Health Care Bills were so wonderful, why would you need to bribe guys in your own Party to vote for them?

Re:Publishing the ACTA negotiations

[DJRumpy]

According to what I've read, that is exactly why it's behind closed doors. Apparently the first thing that happens is each country makes ridiculous claims, and they ask for ridiculous deals, and then they slowly work their way back to reality. If it was all in the public eye, everything would be nice and politically correct, but they would never agree or disagree on anything for fear of exposure and they would never get to the guts of the treaty in the public eye. Really disingenuous that they are only inviting those pushing for the treaty and not those that are against such legislation. Makes the discussion and perspective rather one sided.

Does anyone know if this will be an 'executive' treaty, or one that will have to be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate? I can't imagine that regardless of what goes behind closed doors, the voting public will be too kind to any politician that sells it's citizens down the river.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if they posted the ACTA neg

[CrimsonAvenger]

Anyone who has lived in a jurisdiction with corrupt officials will tell you that bribery occurs not because whatever you are being bribed to do is a bad idea, but because you have the power to withhold whatever the briber wants. Bribery is about power not goodness or badness of the behaviour you are being bribed to do.

Which makes the Democrats (the Party of the People) look even worse. You're not doing the work of "the People" when you require a bribe to do your job....

Note that this is not meant to imply that the Republicans don't take bribes. Though I don't recall a case where a Republican majority leader had to bribe his own guys to get them to vote for the Party's bill.

Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that I've never heard of it.

Re:How accurate are these data?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the matter of state and local government data. The feds are completely transparent by comparison. Even the things that are in the public record are difficult to obtain, expensive, poorly documented, and the data is a mess etc. The "cost of reproduction" is closer to what it would cost to be transcribed on parchment by monks than it is to the cost of making a CD/DVD or FTP. At the drop of a hat they will decide that something _isn't_ public record and then it goes from difficult to impossible, although that data often sneaks out the back door and is available, even older and messier than ever. Or they decide that it has "commercial value" so they charge 10 times more than a business could afford to pay and have a workable business model around it. The state and locals just don't get it. Whole industries have been built on fed data from NASA, USGS, US Census, NOAA etc. and local businesses would benefit from better access to local data as well.

Re:Download Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to download 2005 Toxics Release Inventory data for the state of California [data.gov] and the only link was for a .csv. When I went to download it, up comes an .exe file. Why the binary executable?

The Government (a.k.a. Big Brother or THE ILLUMINATI) wants to infect your computer with uninvited wiretapping software, of course! And once the NWO buys control of Google, every time you visit a Google web site, your computer will send the collected data to Big Brother and the Vatican, so that they will know everything you do and can enforce their agenda for globalization upon you!!! DON'T BE FOOLED!!! ITS A TRAP!!!

Or maybe they're just idiots? They probably spend more time playing WoW in their cubicles than working on data.gov if my past experience working for the government is any indicator.