Data Resources: Government Data by Topics

Any comments, questions, suggestions, request assistance, schedule an appointment for one on one consultancy, email Anna Xiong from Kelley Center for Government Information via govhelp@rice.edu.

Open government data sources are hailed as "the best data sources for data science". The merits include, but are not limited to:

• no cost
• copyright free
• official
• large amount
• long year coverage
• wide range of topics
• wide range of geographic levels
• cross disciplinary

Con:

• very scattered over the Internet
• not always easy to navigate and search
• Agencies use different operation methods and standards. It is very time consuming to learn about each of them, to understand it correctly and use it properly. It also adds the complexity of using the data cross agencies.
• The processing speed, broken link issues, and other unexpected technical issues are common.
• The quality of the technical documents varies a lot from agency to agency.
• The quality of the design of the user friendly search interface and features varies a lot from agency to agency.