Bitwacker Associates

Many quotes have been attributed to Steve Jobs, but my favorite is the following:

Set totally outrageous goals!

Well, one of the more “outrageous” goals for the Linking Open Government Data project at the Tetherless World Constellation at RPI this term is to create the most comprehensive and useful catalog of open government datasets in the world.

To this end, I am challenging our students — and indeed everyone within earshot — to participate in what I’ve dubbed the TWC LOGD Million Dataset Challenge: I’m challenging you to help us create a master catalog of more than 1 million open government datasets from around the world! In return, we’ll make the catalog publicly available through our TWC LOGD Portal, as RDF dumps and via a SPARQL endpoint.

To get this thing started and to make it as easy as possible, I’ve created a Google Form-based interface. Follow the link, add metadata, move on…

I’ve structured the form to accept both catalog and individual dataset entries. Just chose the right options in the form…

To submit a dataset: http://bit.ly/g0d3tY

To view the current status (spreadsheet): http://bit.ly/eANqSg Total (18 Feb 2011): More than 331,345 datasets

A few resources to get started:

1. Worldwide Search CKAN: The Data Hub Prime source!
2. Guardian.co.uk’s catalog of over 12K world government datasets Prime source!
3. Where can I get large datasets open to the public? (Quora) Prime source!
4. DataMarket.com’s International Dataset Search page Prime source!
5. USA Data.gov raw data catalog Prime source!
6. USA Data.gov geodata catalog Prime source!
7. UK Data.gov.uk project Prime source!
8. Africa Africover datasets download (multiple countries) Prime source!
9. Blog listing many catalogs Prime source!
10. EU Official National Data Catalogs Prime source!
11. ePSI Public Sector Information (PSI) Data Catalogues (by governments) Prime source!
12. Open Data Euskadi International Catalog (Based on eOSI list) Prime source!
13. Open Knowledge List of European Open Data Catalogues Prime source!
14. Civic Commons List of Open Data Initiatives Prime source!
15. Univ. of Colorado (Boulder) Libraries Foreign Information by Country Prime source!
16. Factual.com’s “comprehensive” repository of government data
17. New York State GIS Clearinghouse
18. New York State Dept. of Health Statistics
19. California Dept of Education data collections
20. OpenGovernmentData.org catalogs
21. GovLoop.com’s List of Open Government Plans (US federal agencies)
22. Socrata open datasets
23. Danish data catalog
24. Finnish data catalog
25. Australian data catalog
26. spaghettiopendata.org Citizen-driven Italian Open Data site
27. Istat.it Italian government statistical data
28. Datasets from the Piedmont region of Italy
29. data.CNR.it The Italian National Research Council site
30. Public Datasets on Amazon Web Services
31. Alaska State GeoSpatial Data Clearinghouse (Alaska DNR)
32. Asian Development Bank Statistical Database Service

Note: As the dataset grows we’ll improve both the data entry and catalog interface. Our immediate goal is to grow the list…

Note: Watch for answers to this Quora question: What is the most comprehensive list of international open government datasets?