Open Government Data: What It Is, Why It's Free, and Who Uses It

Why Governments Publish Data for Free

The principle behind open government data is straightforward: information collected by public institutions using public money should be accessible to the public. The UK's Open Government Licence, Australia's Creative Commons licensing, and the US tradition of government-produced works being in the public domain all flow from this principle.

The Open Government Licence (UK)

In the UK, most government data is published under the Open Government Licence version 3.0. This licence allows you to copy, publish, distribute, transmit, and adapt the data, including for commercial purposes, without charge. The only requirement is that you acknowledge the source.

US Government Data

In the United States, works produced by the federal government are in the public domain by statute (17 U.S.C. § 105). This means SEC EDGAR filings, USPTO patent records, SAM.gov procurement data, FDA recalls, and NPPES healthcare provider data are all freely usable for any purpose, including commercial products.

The Difference Between Raw and Packaged Data

Raw government data is often in difficult-to-use formats: large pipe-delimited text files, nested XML, or ZIP archives. Packaged data is the same underlying information, cleaned and delivered as a ready-to-use CSV or XLSX file.