Data-philes are abuzz with the recent launch of Data.gov a website created “to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government” according to the site description. Users can search the vast Data.gov catalog by category (Income, Expenditures, Poverty and Wealth; Law Enforcement Court and Prisons, etc.) and/or agency (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Defense, for example). The site offers two ways to access data: 1) the raw data catalog consisting of instant view/download of platform-independent, machine readable datasets in a variety of formats, and 2) a Tool Catalog with application-driven access to Federal data with hyperlinks and featuring data-mining and extraction tools and other services.

Feeling somewhat befuddled by these descriptions? No worries if you are, like me, technically-challenged. Using the handy Data.gov tutorial, I was able to determine with a five minute search that between 1999 and 2004, the lung cancer mortality rate in California for every 100,000 African-Americans was 55, significantly higher than for Whites at 44 per 100,000 (noting that this last figure probably includes Latinos because of the way in which the census categories Hispanics or Latinos). Incidentally, the link that Data.gov sent me to for these statistics, the CDC’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research or WONDER, is a fantastic resource in its own right. Finally, Data.gov’s authors describe the website as a work in progress and invite users to suggest additional data sets and site enhancements to make the site an even more comprehensive tool for access to federal government data.