Agencies are doing plenty to ensure that the data being released on sites such as data.gov is high quality, according to Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, who spoke at a Brookings Institute event on June 8.

Recently, critics--most notably Clay Johnson of the Sunlight Foundation--have questioned the quality of the data being released through the Open Government Directive, saying some data sets do not provide enough context about how data was collected or provide accessibility through common software programs.

"Agencies actually fill out a very detailed template about the dataset itself, not just about the name of the data set, but also get into when was it collected, how was it collected, the statistical element around the data set itself and the frequency of the collection itself," said Kundra.

In addition to context, data quality has been addressed by the Open Government Directive, said Kundra. Every agency now has a senior accountable official who is responsible for data quality.

The data.gov platform also has feedback tools. "People are getting back to us and ranking and rating data sets, so they can tell us very quickly which data sets don't have good quality. And what we're seeing is that the feedback loop is having an impact at the agency level, where this greater transparency is leading to an improvement in data quality coupled with the senior accountable officials at the agency level," said Kundra.

Before data is posted to public-facing sites, agency data is de-identified so that no two data sets could lead to the recognition of an individual. Kundra stressed the importance of this step, as citizen privacy and national security are two major considerations with the release of public data.

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