Coalition letter in support of OPEN Government Data Act
Dear Chairman Chaffetz and Ranking Member Cummings,
We, the undersigned businesses, industry groups, civil society organizations, and transparency advocates, write to express our strong support for the bipartisan Open, Permanent, Electronic, and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act (H.R. 5051). This bill would establish a comprehensive policy across the federal government to ensure that government data is accessible to the public by default.
In recent years, open data—data that is made freely available to use without restrictions—has proven to be an enormously effective platform for innovation in both the public and private sectors, supporting significant economic value, increasing transparency, efficiency, and accountability in government operations, and powering new tools and services that address some of the country’s most pressing economic and social challenges.
The OPEN Government Data Act would require federal agencies to publish government data in machine-readable and open formats and use open licenses. In addition, it would direct agencies to support innovative uses of government data, adopt consistent data practices across government, and develop best practices for open data.
We support the OPEN Government Data Act for several reasons. First and foremost, this legislation would institutionalize the federal government’s commitment to open data and allow the United States to remain a world leader on open data. Second, adopting a policy of open by default for government data would ensure that the value of this public resource would continue to grow as the government unlocks and creates new data sets. Third, a firm commitment to providing open data as a public resource would encourage businesses, non-profits, and others to invest in innovative tools that make use of government data.
Given the many benefits of this legislation, as well as the broad industry and public support for open data, we respectfully ask Congress to take quick action on this bill.
Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services
American Library Association
American Statistical Association
ARiA
Association of Public Data Users
Association of Research Libraries
Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending
Dissent Foundation
CA Technologies
Center for Data Innovation
Center for Open Data Enterprise
Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness
CompTIA
Consumer Technology Association
Council of Professional Associations on Federal
Statistics
Data Coalition
Demand Progress
Elder Research, Inc.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
EMC Corporation
Engine
Esri
Government Accountability Project
GovTrack.us
Information Unlimited Inc. (IUI)
Institute for Healthy Air, Water, and Soil
Internet Infrastructure Coalition
iSolon.org
Massive Connections, LLC
New America’s Open Technology Institute
Niskanen Center
NuCivic/GovDelivery
Object Management Group, Inc.
OpenDataSoft
OpenTheGovernment.org
Population Association of America/Association
of Population Centers
Project On
Government Oversight (POGO)
R Street Institute
Rackspace
Semantic Arts, Inc.
Socrata
SPARC
Splunk Inc.
Sunlight Foundation
Taxpayers for Common Sense
The Foundation for Earth Science
TransitScreen
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for Advanced Technology and Innovation
U.S. Open Data
