Data.gov Geo Viewer: Lipstick on a Pig?
So with great interest I read Marten’s blog post on the new Data.gov “Geo Viewer”. Marten’s got a ton of reasons why its great and why it fails, but for me it didn’t work at all. I just get this FAIL message below:
I mean maybe I could figure out what went wrong, but since Data.gov gives me no details about datasets I just move on.
Of course it could be one of the many problems Marten showcases, but I will say the “share this” works great. In all seriousness putting a “preview” map on Data.gov isn’t going to change a thing about how worthless Data.gov is for actually finding data. You can of course put your comment in the little box at Data.gov and I’m sure they’ll forward it on to “top men”.
Of course this brings up a huge point with how big a failure Data.gov has been. Just going to the “Ideas” page for Data.gov, you are presented with a big middle finger.
What would I like Data.gov to look like in July 2010? No really, I totally trust the government to do right by data. Nothing says that nobody from the Data.gov crew looks at that Ideas page more than that simple statement. Rather, it is more of an exercise to make citizens feel part of the process, distracting them from actually doing something about it. Maybe it would be better to just go through ESRI to get things fixed.
#FAIL
It’s really a shame because a data clearinghouse is a good idea. But Data.gov is a red-headed stepchild, apparently.
The ever changing nature of government means the new ‘management’ will continually need to be informed about the need for this type of website.
It’s a bit depressing.
I think you’re being a bit harsh. I work as a contractor for the government processing data from other contractors and problems with data are rampant everywhere. Changing administrations has helped put an emphasis on digital data.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the government data warehouse has a long way to go, but the problems they’re experiencing aren’t completely unique to government. Its easy to hold up Denmark or another country as a gold standard, but the United States government is dealing with a lot more data AND a lot more bureaucracy AND a wide range of users. Data.gov needs massive improvement, but it is a long way from where it was when it was first released.
The problem with Data.gov is the core is rotten. They keep changing the curtains, but don’t address the actually infrastructure problems.
I’m not sure where the core is rotten?
You are kidding right? The search returns results that have nothing to do with what you are looking for. If I type in “Geology Hawaii” you get this:
http://www.data.gov/raw/19
Total fail and proves search is still completely broken.
You state total fail but both the word “Geology” and “Hawaii” are listed in the description; hardly a fail. That dataset states “excludes” Hawaii but that doesn’t make the dataset fail. Also, an issue with a search tool does not a failed site make.
While the search did result in what Lefty searched for, I’ll say that it is a fail. Textual based search isn’t the best way to find geodata as I’ve said again and again.
Data.gov is to share geodata. If the search fails, the website fails.
There is a place for textual searching in the realm of geosearching. I agree with Dave that the user can learn from their failures about how to search on the system. I agree the search shouldn’t just grab anything in the description — the advanced search should have a place/geo search function. I believe federal metadata should include place keywords?
I wonder, and I dont know, if the designers of the application are GIS people or data/IT specific people. I’m amazed at the different thought processes that GIS people use (even if it gets ESRI vision for designing web aps).
Looks like about $50,000 worth of services from ESRI; a simple-as-dirt, out-of-the-box bunch of demo-code with nothing underneath it.
I just spent 12 minutes clicking through on datasets (oil leases, Gulf-area critical areas, elevation products, boundary lines, etc., to name a few) and NONE were available as a ‘preview’ product.
The site is in keeping with past performance and government expectations…nice idea that earns a #ANOTHER_ESRI-FED-FAIL hashtag.
But Jack did get his foot in the door before the all-powerful Google machine, so there’s something to be said for the effort. Check this space in 18 months and let’s see what it looks like…
I received the same error message & after clicking through it, all that I end up with is a map without any apparent way to add or find data. I really hope that I’m missing something here.
No lipstick on that site.
I work for the government doing mapping too, and this is not very good. None of the apps work for me. It would be nice if the maps were not located on third party sites ensuring stability. If the data has a government domain it should be owned by the government.
there’s no there there to receive the makeup.
data.gov is a dead site that doesn’t look that way yet.
The core concept doesn’t make sense to me. I cannot believe that anybody anywhere really sits down at a computer and says first, “I want government data” and second, “what do they have?”
I understand data.gov as a way for the current administration to encourage change at agencies that haven’t been putting their data out for others to use. But that problem isn’t solved by advertising more and more stuff from the USGS–we already do pretty well at getting data to the public. If it’s just a re-hash of something.usgs.gov, where’s the added value?
The other problem I have is that, like a lot of clearinghouses, the site tends to emphasize administrivia because that’s easier for them to show. So we’re treated to Number of Downloads, Data.gov Data Category Type, Specialized Data Category Designation, and Unique ID as though these things matter to you at this point. Almost grudingly they show a link to the real page that provides these data, labeled only as “Agency Data Series Page”, which is http://tin.er.usgs.gov/geology/us/. Check that page and tell me which of these you find easier to understand. Did data.gov do anything useful here?
(Ironic that your test case is geology in Hawaii–we have geologic maps online for every other state at http://tin.er.usgs.gov/geology/state/. In this case the geologic maps focus mostly on rock type, and Hawaii is relatively uniform in that regard.)
Great to see all the debates still going strong. You are lucky in the US in that data.gov at least tries to put all the dots together. Unfortunately there are many of us around the world that still have to spend a lot of time trying to find relevant data in the first place.
What ever happened to http://www.mapdex.org? It was a great site to find a listing of all the various servers, their map services, their projections, … all in a simple interface.
Does anyone know of a similar site, or are we to rely solely on ArcGIS online?
The author of MapDex.org went and decided to work for ESRI.