Congress approves act that opens US government data to the public
Congress has passed a bill that could make it easier for you to access public data released by the government. The House approved the OPEN Government Data Act on Saturday, while all eyes were on the shutdown, as part of a larger bill to support evidence-based policymaking. It requires that federal agencies must publish any "non-sensitive" info in a "machine-readable" format (essentially in a way that's legible on your smartphone or laptop). The act also insists that agencies appoint a chief data officer to oversee all open data efforts. Having passed the Senate last Wednesday, the bill is next headed to the President's desk.
The US public already paid for the data to be gathered, analyzed, and reported; why shouldn't they be able to freely access it?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday December 26 2018, @08:50PM (2 children)
I don't think PDF can really qualify as machine readable. It's quite often display-only as far as computers are concerned unless you make them pretend they're humans and use OCR like we do. It's about the least useful possible file format you can put a document in. Snail-mailing html files on paper tape would actually be more useful if you could find a reader.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @08:57PM
You are not fully 'thinking through' from a Dr Evil standpoint.
You need a machine to be able to 'read' a pdf, so therefore PDF must qualify as "machine readable" because a "machine" is necessary to "read" it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:00AM
I don't think machines can read yet.