Data.gov’s next big thing: Mashing up federal stats with maps

June 21, 2010 at 8:40 am | Posted in Remote Sensing Law Current Events | Leave a comment

by Sara M. Langston with the blog faculty

Source: NextGov

Data.gov, the federal government’s clearinghouse of downloadable information, plans to release new gadgets that will enable the public to easily create mashups of maps and statistics, according to officials working on the enhancements.

Mashups are a fusion of information and images that can illustrate relationships or patterns and, in this case, provide transparency into the business of Washington. Data.gov is the brainchild of federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, who has said he envisions the website becoming an online marketplace where people worldwide can exchange entire databases and reuse content in ways the federal government could never imagine.

Within the next month, the site will offer the public a chance to preview a so-called viewer that will let them combine many of the 270,000 data sets posted on Data.gov with maps, said Jerry Johnston, geospatial information officer at the Environmental Protection Agency. For the past couple of months, representatives from various agencies, including EPA, the General Services Administration, U.S. Geological Survey, Health and Human Services Department, and NASA, have assisted in the effort to add more interactive features to the site…more