1 of 23

Open Government Data: Understanding Open Access vs. Public Domain

Documents Association of New Jersey

October 25, 2019: Trenton, NJ �Thomas Edison State University,

Presenter: Jennifer C. Boettcher, Georgetown University

2 of 23

Jennifer C. Boettcher

Jennifer C. Boettcher and Leonard M. Gains. Industry Research Using the Economic Census. Greenwood Press: Phoenix, AZ. 2004

M.B.A., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 2005

M.L.S., State University of New York, Albany, N.Y.,1992

B.A., University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H., 1987

Georgetown University 1997-present

ALA RUSA BRASS Member since 1991

Founder of Business Information Finders (BIF) and Capital Area Business Academic Librarians (CABAL) in DC

2013 Emerald Research Grant: Zombie List (reanimated business sources)

2010 Gale Cengage Learning Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship

3 of 23

Librarian & Information Scientist

As a Librarian, I

Understand the source
Know how to find the source
Know the related subjects
Know how it’s connected to other sources
Know how to read it
Make connections between publisher and researcher

As a Librarian, I don’t

Publish the primary source
Have your context or expertise
Do statistical analysis
Interpret the data
Do data entry
Have legal expertise

These are my views and do not reflect those of Georgetown.

Boettcher, J. C., & Dames, K. M. (2018). Government data as intellectual property:

Is public domain the same as open access? Online Searcher, 42(4), 42-48.

4 of 23

Adaptations of DIKW pyramid by US Army Knowledge Managers,

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid

Data are not:

Information

Technology

Digital

Analytics

Evidence

Research

Visualizations

Ideas

Data are

collected facts

“raw material”

5 of 23

Public Domain: No Copyright Restrictions

Public Domain is not protected by intellectual property laws. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.

Example: no longer protected due to age of creative work.

Works produced for the U.S. Government by its officers and employees should not be subject to copyright. The provision applies the principle equally to unpublished and published works. 17 USC 105

REMEMBER: Public domain data must be attributed.

6 of 23

Administrative Data and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 5 U.S.C. § 552, 1966

What to ask for

Anything unpublished by US government
Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)

Read this from Archives

File here FOIAonline

Oversight: Office of Government Information Services

7 of 23

Why Open Data Exists

Open Access is not law. It’s a license agreement from the copyright owner and a set of principles: CC0

Do you have the right to convey copyright?
States and local governments
NGO’s and non-profit

Principals

Reuse and redistribution of the data
Allows derivative works as Open only
No restrictions on who can access and use
Electronically transferable
Machine-readable

8 of 23

Public Domain Vs. Open Access

Public Domain

Free data flow
Law
Fed Government products
Data at any stage can be retrieved by FOIA
Not for some sub-nationals

Open Access

Free data flow
Because of ownership of copyright
Principles and license

9 of 23

Major Sources of Social Science Data in the US Government

10 of 23

Major Sources of Natural Science Data from the US Government

https://www.flickr.com/photos/notbrucelee/6897137283/in/photostream

11 of 23

Problems that come with government data

Beggars can’t be choosers

Too old
Not to the geographic level needed
Too detailed
Have to file a FOIA request

Compatibility

Standardization
Combining two datasets even from same source might not be possible
Combining two different sources must look at methodology

12 of 23

P.E.S.T. Analysis for Industry

Political

Legislative

Congress.gov

Executive

Regulations.com

Judicial

United States Courts

Economic

Sector Inflation

BLS’s Producers Price Index

Microeconomic trends

Socio-cultural

Norms & Ratios

IRS’s Statistics of Income

Peers and partners

Technology

Patents

Citation Analysis

Tech Transfer

Government funded research to license

13 of 23

Let’s discuss

boettcher@georgetown.edu

202 687-7495

Twitter: @jenny.wombat

These slides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

AMSTAT images from

http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2018/05/01/fy18fedbudget

14 of 23

Vocabulary: Tools, Process, and Products

Datasets or compilation: Raw or statistical numbers, can be flat file such as Comma Separated Variable (CSV) or proprietary like Excel

Metadata: Includes field descriptions for the dataset, found in codebooks

Schema: How data is organized or structured using standards, like classification

Application Program Interface (API): Read-only machine to machine querying, generally from JSON or XML files

Big data: Raw, unstructured data; normally transactional (example: each check out)

Natural Language Processing (NLP): Use for text analysis, not numeric data

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Includes predictive analytics and machine learning

Reports: Usually aggregated statistics based on big data (example: how many checkouts)

Data Visualization: Using software to visually communicate relationships and context of data

Open Data: Freely accessible data, created for a specific purpose; by-product of decision making or research

15 of 23

Funding for Federal Data Collection

NIH- National Institutes of Health (HHS)

NSF- National Science Foundation

AHRQ- Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (HHS)

FDA- Food & Drug Agency (HHS)

BEA- Bureau of Economic Analysis (DoC)

BJS- Bureau of Justice Statistics (DoJ)

BTS- Bureau of Transportation Stat. (DoT)

Census- DoC

EIA- Energy Information Admin. (DoE)

ERS- Economic Research Service (DoA)

NASS- Nat. Agricultural Stat. Service (DoA)

NCES- Nat. Center of Education Stat. (DoE)

NCHS- Nat. Center for Health Stat . (HHS)

NCSES- Nat. Center for Science and Engineering Sat. (NSF)

ORES- Off. of Research, Evaluation, and Statistcs (SSA)

SOI- Statistics of Income (IRS)

Image from AmStat (permission pending)

16 of 23

One Statistical Office in US: Why Not?

1. Privacy: The Privacy Act of 1974, Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA), and Statistical Policy Directive No. 1 (2014) require agencies to ensure that the collection and maintenance of citizens' data is accurate, confidential, and within legal restrictions. With different offices having access to those records, there would be less possibility of everything being leaked.

2. Security: Along the lines of fewer offices having access to data records. The more servers that hold the data, the safer it is. The times when an exchange of information is necessary laws and regulations among departments allow to protect access to data.

3. Integrity: The income you report to IRS might be different from what you report to the Census Bureau.

4. Methodology: Sometimes data must have a higher number of people questioned so the accuracy will be better; different methods of collection or sampling may be required.

5. Popularity: Anything being done by the government has a political dimension, especially funding for employees and for modernizing and updating technology, attractiveness of the research, and repetition of statistical programs by agencies.