@danso thanks for the feedback on data.gov. I'm part of the small (3 person) team that helps to manage it. If you have a moment to chat I'll see if I can reach out to you to see if you'd be interested in participating in some more in-depth user research in the future. Folks can also always leave feedback via email, github, twitter, and other means - https://www.data.gov/contact
Data.gov and Federal agencies use the same metadata standard (DCAT) that Google Dataset Search is using so much of our metadata is also being syndicated there.
I think the biggest blocker with using publicly available datasets is stale data.
If you, or anyone else who aggregates these datasets could make it EASY to find the FREQUENCY of updates, rather than just the LAST UPDATED timestamp, it'd incentivize people to consume APIs more.
I realize having a snapshot from 2014 is better than what was publicly available before. But I feel no one's really talked about why they would or wouldn't use particular data.
I think this is exactly correct. Frequency of updates (and clear documentation of the lag relationship between when data is reported and for what period data is applicable too) is often missing or hard to find.
The value of increasing the cadence of updates should also not be understated! A lot of public dataset report on annual frequencies with more than a quarter of delay... Although this is a different issue altogether that has more to do with the processes of the reporting agency.
Definitely, feel free to email me (in my user bio). Thanks for the info about the upcoming comment period, will have to put a reminder on my calendar for that.
The Federal Data Strategy will also be opening up for comments again in October - https://strategy.data.gov/feedback/
Data.gov and Federal agencies use the same metadata standard (DCAT) that Google Dataset Search is using so much of our metadata is also being syndicated there.