A massive index of government data kept on U.S. citizens could be publicly released as soon as the first week of March. It is believed to be the largest index of government data in the world, according to the open information group that requested it, the Sunlight Foundation.
Based on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed more than a year ago, the release will “create a more complete picture of the government’s data holdings,” according to the Sunlight Foundation.
The data index, kept by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is based on something all federal agencies keep called Enterprise Data Inventories (EDIs). The inventories detail the information that a given agency holds.
Once released, it will be an unprecedented look at what data federal agencies government-wide collect on Americans. The EDIs stem from a 2013 order by President Barack Obama that mandated the construction and maintenance of agency data indexes. Part of that order required that the data be “open and machine readable.”
Until now, the public hasn’t known what they don’t know. In other words, there’s been know way to know what information the government doesn’t or doesn’t collect.
