We're trying.
It's not as easy as you think.
The incentives for government to care or want to work with you really aren't there.
That said, we've had success in some limited areas.
For example, voting information (which was 7+ figure data for the US) is now online. This was originally a partnership I helped create with Pew and Google back in 2008 (now expanded to include MS and others as well, wonderfully):
After 4+ years, we now have a large number of states voting information online and free.
A large number of people at various states also put their asses on the line to help make this happen over the years . I wish I could give them medals.
:)
There are other example, like patent data, etc. To be honest, i'd rather us stay behind the scenes and just have the info released, even if it means people never know we were involved. It prevents a lot of issues from people who make large amounts of money off data that should be public and open. Of course, there are times/cases where it makes sense to use our name and brand to help, and when necessary, we do that.
We also fund plenty of non-profit orgs, including folks like Carl. But getting traction is simply not that easy. A lot of government agencies make revenue from data they publish by selling subscriptions to it or otherwise charging. They don't want to give it to you if your plan is to open it up, even if you are willing to pay large sums. I can't often blame them. Congress cares more about seeing agencies budget neutral than they do about "open data".
There were also mandates that public datasets be cataloged sanely and released. This led to data.gov. However, because of the way it worked some agencies had some perverse incentives, like "release the most datasets".
This led to humorous things like every single separate piece of data being published as its own dataset on data.gov, which had no good search, making parts of it entirely useless.
Anyway, the short answer is: We're trying. We've been trying.
Good! Thanks for your comment. I thought of an amusing way to think of a rather unamusing situation, so I figured I'd share it. Maybe you'll laugh, I hope.
Let's say you have a large extended family and elderly grandparents that have boxes of family photos. You know that the family would love to flip through these, and digitizing them and putting them online is beyond your grandparents' abilities.
So you offer to help them digitize and share the files. On your time and dime.
But your grandparents surprise you by saying "no". The first thing they're worried about is that, mixed in with those photos, are some risque photos of grandma when she was younger. She doesn't want those shared. But also - and this is the part that really drops your jaw - unknown to you for many years your grandparents have been charging family members a small fee to access the photographs, and it's quite a little side income for them, especially around the holidays when they need it most!
That said, we've had success in some limited areas. For example, voting information (which was 7+ figure data for the US) is now online. This was originally a partnership I helped create with Pew and Google back in 2008 (now expanded to include MS and others as well, wonderfully):
https://votinginfoproject.org/about
After 4+ years, we now have a large number of states voting information online and free. A large number of people at various states also put their asses on the line to help make this happen over the years . I wish I could give them medals. :)
There are other example, like patent data, etc. To be honest, i'd rather us stay behind the scenes and just have the info released, even if it means people never know we were involved. It prevents a lot of issues from people who make large amounts of money off data that should be public and open. Of course, there are times/cases where it makes sense to use our name and brand to help, and when necessary, we do that.
We also fund plenty of non-profit orgs, including folks like Carl. But getting traction is simply not that easy. A lot of government agencies make revenue from data they publish by selling subscriptions to it or otherwise charging. They don't want to give it to you if your plan is to open it up, even if you are willing to pay large sums. I can't often blame them. Congress cares more about seeing agencies budget neutral than they do about "open data".
There were also mandates that public datasets be cataloged sanely and released. This led to data.gov. However, because of the way it worked some agencies had some perverse incentives, like "release the most datasets". This led to humorous things like every single separate piece of data being published as its own dataset on data.gov, which had no good search, making parts of it entirely useless.
Anyway, the short answer is: We're trying. We've been trying.