Data.gov
The US government's central open data portal — 370,000+ datasets from federal agencies, searchable and downloadable in machine-readable formats.
What should journalists know about Data.gov?
Data.gov is the federal government's central catalog for open data — over 370,000 datasets from dozens of agencies, required by statute under the OPEN Government Data Act. It is a catalog, not a database. Data.gov indexes metadata and links to datasets hosted on individual agency servers. You search here, but the actual data lives on agency sites (census.gov, EPA, NOAA, etc.). This matters because data quality, format, and update frequency vary enormously by agency. Some datasets are clean CSVs updated daily; others are PDFs from 2014. The search interface is functional but basic — filtering by agency, format, and topic works, but discovery is hit-or-miss for niche datasets. The real value is as a starting point: if you know a federal dataset exists but do not know which agency publishes it, Data.gov will find it. For data journalism, the most useful datasets tend to come from Census, BLS, EPA, NOAA, and USDA — and you will often end up going directly to those agency portals for the actual download. The 2025 presidential administration has introduced uncertainty about the long-term availability of some datasets, making it worth downloading and archiving data you depend on rather than assuming permanent access.
Finding federal datasets by topic, agency, or format. Discovering datasets you did not know existed across agencies. Downloading bulk government data in machine-readable formats (CSV, JSON, XML, API). Building data journalism projects on official government sources. Cross-referencing data from multiple federal agencies.
State or local government data (use individual state data portals). Real-time or frequently updated data (most datasets update monthly or less). Data analysis — Data.gov is a catalog and search engine, not an analysis tool. Pre-cleaned or journalism-ready datasets (quality varies wildly). Historical data that agencies have removed from their servers.
Security & Privacy
Data is scrambled while being sent to their servers
Data is scrambled when stored on their servers
Where servers are located — affects which governments can request your data
Privacy policy summary
Federal government website subject to federal privacy laws. Collects standard web analytics. No account required to search or download datasets. The datasets themselves are public government data — no personal information is collected through browsing or downloading. No commercial tracking or advertising.
How to protect yourself:
No account required for most functionality — you can search and download anonymously. The datasets are public records, so there is no sensitivity in accessing them. The main risk is data reliability: always verify dataset currency, check the 'last modified' date, and cross-reference with the source agency. Download and archive datasets you depend on — federal data availability can change with administrations. For large-scale data work, use the CKAN API rather than manual downloads.
Federal government website operated by GSA on government infrastructure. HTTPS throughout. Subject to federal cybersecurity standards. No account required for core functionality. No commercial tracking. The datasets themselves are public records. The only consideration is data provenance — always verify that a dataset is current and sourced from the authoritative agency, since Data.gov is a catalog pointing to external agency servers.
Who Owns This
Pricing
Completely free. All datasets are public domain or open license.
This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-11, using our published methodology. Independent security review is pending. Security posture can change at any time. This is not a guarantee of safety.
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