100s of New Federal Datasets Released, Many Environmental

Environmental reporters who use databases to find and build stories have a fresh windfall thanks to President Obama's efforts to open up the federal government.

On Jan. 22, over 40 federal agencies published hundreds of new datasets via the open government clearinghouse Data.gov. This includes three new datasets from EPA, PLUS many other datasets relevant to environmental issues.

All of this data was released in response to a Dec. 8, 2009, White House open government order. It directs: "Within 45 days, each agency shall identify and publish online in an open format at least three high-value data sets... and register those data sets via Data.gov. These must be data sets not previously available online or in a downloadable format."

You can see the whole list of new datasets here.

SEJ's WatchDog newsletter published descriptions and hotlinks to many of the datasets relevant to environmental reporters on Jan. 27, 2010.