Data.gov to become a portal to agency data under digital strategy, says VanRoekel

The White House's digital strategy will require Data.gov to transform from a bulk-upload, bulk-download data repository to a portal that links directly to agency data, said Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel May 24 at an event in Washington, D.C.

Ideally, Data.gov will become a developer resource that links to live data housed by the agencies--eventually becoming a clearinghouse of agency application programming interfaces, or APIs, he said.

Data quality and currency has been a common complaint of data posted to Data.gov, but under the plan, the General Services Administration will provide common analytic tools for agencies to use, which could improve data quality, said Sheila Campbell, director of the center for excellence in digital government at GSA, during the May 24 event, which was sponsored by AFFIRM and ACT-IAC.

"It will help us identify those websites, those applications, those other things where the quality of the content isn't what it should be. And I think certainly the metrics and the data will help us prioritize in terms of what we need to improve," said Campbell.

The strategy also sets forth "opportunities to develop guidelines for content quality, and for agencies to identify their top customer tasks and to make sure they're delivering those in the best possible way, making sure the content is written in plain language," she said.

Despite the wide array of tasks laid out in the plan and the 12-month timeline, Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires, said the "year-long timeline is doable," but it will take a great deal of collaboration.

"There's a lot of good work going on already across the federal government in all of these areas, pick any one of them. So, a lot of this is really about finding where we're doing this well and then leveraging that," said Spires.

"We need to have very specific milestones that force us to play together well. We have plenty of money to carry this strategy out--I can guarantee that," he said.

For more:
- listen to the event

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