Take a Dip in the Government Data Pool

The federal government spends about $4 trillion every year on everything from ships to bridges to healthcare. Along the way, it also accumulates a lot of data. Have you thought about how useful it could be in learning important concepts to help us succeed or discovering new opportunities for business growth?

Government Data – Where to Start

Let’s get warmed up by looking at some big-picture sites and then drill down into more specialized data sources. Our travels begin at data.gov, which is maintained by the General Services Administration. Consider this a map where you can search more than 330 thousand data sets. It helps to have good search skills, but take a spin around the site and you’ll be amazed at what you will find.

The federal government operates more than 6,000 websites, most of which are accessible to the public. If you’re curious about which sites are the most popular and how many people are currently connected, look at analytics.usa.gov. Can you guess which site is the most popular? You’ll find that information here.

Looking for Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data? You could stay on the analytics.usa.gov site and use the drop-down list to find popular pages on the HHS websites. You could also head over to healthdata.gov to access a searchable database of health data, most of which come from HHS agencies. Read More >>