Additional Resources

Continuing Implementation of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018: Who Is Using the Data?

Nancy Potok

In this Effective Policy Learning piece, the author, Nancy Potok, a Visiting Fellow at RTI International, describes how the Democratizing Data Search and Discovery Platform is making great strides in helping meet the mandates of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) and demonstrating the value of federal data. The act encourages federal agencies to improve the way they use data for evidence-based decision-making. It emphasizes the importance of data sharing, data transparency, and data accessibility across government agencies. To discover who is using federal data, the search and discovery platform allows agencies to track metrics through machine learning and language models to gain a deeper understanding of use. This column is an introduction to a deeper dive exploring the collection and value of usage data that will be published in a special HDSR issue, “Democratizing Data: Data as a Public Asset,” planned for spring 2024.

Democratizing Our Data: A Manifesto

Julia Lane
Public data are foundational to our democratic system. People need consistently high-quality information from trustworthy sources. In the new economy, wealth is generated by access to data; government's job is to democratize the data playing field. Yet data produced by the American government are getting worse and costing more. In Democratizing Our Data, Julia Lane argues that good data are essential for democracy. Her book is a wake-up call to America to fix its broken public data system.

Data Inventories for the Modern Age? Using Data Science to Open Government Data

Julia Lane, Ernesto Gimeno, Ekaterina Levitskaya, Zheyuan Zhang, and Alberto Zigoni
This article describes how data science techniques—machine learning and natural language processing—can be used to open the black box of government data. It then describes how an incentive structure can be established—using human–computer interaction techniques —to create a new and sustainable data ecosystem. The particular focus is on the United States and on scientific researchers, who are major users of government data. However, the approach can be deployed to other use cases, such as data mentions in newspapers and government reports, and many other countries.

Rich Search and Discovery for Research Datasets

Edited by Julia Lane, Ian Mulvany, and Paco Nathan
This ground-breaking book explores how automating the search for and discovery of datasets can help tackle irreproducibility in social science.

Show US the Data Podcast Series

Nancy Potok
The Show US the Data podcast series is a series of six five-minute podcasts, discussing a variety of data sets from agencies that participated in the Show US the Data pilot study.