Get the skinny with Google Public Data
You’re online, you Google. It’s nearly as much of a given as breathing. Unless you’re one of those Yahoo! only people… you know who you are. But are you using the search tool to its ultimate capacity? It can have a big economic impact upon you. Let’s say you’re looking to move to another state and you need public data like unemployment rates… because you’ll have to work in your new home state and you want to know how likely you will be to hold on to your employment.
Government agencies should make such info easy to find, but they don’t. And when it can make the difference between making a good decision with stable outlook or a less fortunate decision where lower average salaries and higher costs of living lead to a greater need for cash advance in Oregon loans and mortgage loan modification,you want the right info when you need it.
Kim Hart reports for the Washington Post that Google has launched a search tool that helps users uncover public data that can be difficult to find on government Web sites because they are buried in a sea of facts, files and other unrelated information. Called Google Public Data, it makes federal, state and local governments easily accessible to citizens. This is very much in line with President Obama’s goal of making government more transparent for the people.
What comes first?
Google will first make U.S. population and unemployment data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics available. Other pieces of juicy information, such as emissions statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, will follow on its heels.
Wikipedia and Amazon have come forth with tools to make government info more searchable, but Google makes the kind of noise only a giant in the room can. Their team in Washington has urged government agencies to make their material more searchable, and it now appears that they’re listening.
There’s a law, you know
The E-Government Act of 2002 requires government agencies to make information more accessible electronically. However, compliance has been all but negated by poor Web design and illogical placement/organization of data. Sounds like the usual bureaucracy, doesn’t it? Interesting, Google has said that some agencies even insert code into their site structure which makes some pages invisible to search engines. That is the opposite of government transparency. The public deserves to know.
“Information from government sources has been one of the thornier areas,” said David Girouard of Google Enterprise. The new tool “is taking data, reformatting it so it’s immediately consumable… so people don’t have to go through rows and rows of data.”
Need unemployment rate data?
Google users can search for a specific piece of data, like the unemployment rate in California, and a box appears at the top of search results with the relevant data. However, some experts warn that inaccuracies do occur when these figures are entered into government databases in the first place, so results may vary. Again, not surprising from America’s government. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re doing the best they can, but a machine that large is undeniably prone to error. Once feedback loops are implemented, where government officials can quickly and easily be made aware of errors so they can expedite quick change, the system will be of even greater value.
The fact that the data is more available to the public in the first place is a positive, however.
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