Some open-data activists refer to it as “dark data” — and they are not talking about classified information or data the government might release only if compelled by a Freedom of Information Act request. “If they’re going to delete something, how will we even know it’s deleted if we didn’t know it was there?” he asked. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe obstacles have spurred debate among open-data activists over how to build an archiving system for the government’s science data that ensures that the public does not lose access to it, regardless of who is in power. The need to write custom code to extract data from, say, the E.P.A.’s discharge monitoring reports is one reason that, despite having hosted more than two dozen “data rescue” events since January, the activist group Data Refuge lists only 158 data sets in its public directory. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyExcept when certain data is the subject of a lawsuit or multiple F.O.I.A.

Source: New York Times March 06, 2017 21:35 UTC