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Data.gov is the United States government’s open data website. It provides access to datasets published by agencies across the federal government. Data.gov is intended to provide access to government open data to the public, achieve agency missions, drive innovation, fuel economic activity, and uphold the ideals of an open and transparent government.

The impetus for the creation of Data.gov was the January 2009 Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), working with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other agency partners, launched Data.gov on May 21, 2009. In 2014, the current version of the Data.gov catalog was launched. Agencies compile metadata such as title, description, keywords, and links for accessing their datasets, and the Data.gov catalog automatically “harvests” that metadata to populate a continually updated catalog.

In 2019, the process of maintaining a central catalog of federal agency datasets was made a statutory mandate under the OPEN Government Data Act. Federal agencies are required by statute to create and maintain comprehensive metadata inventories to be harvested by a central federal catalog operated by GSA.