Awesome Public Datasets – Government: U.S. Federal Government Data Catalog

URL: http://catalog.data.gov/dataset
Category: Themed directories
Tags: datasets, government, open-data
Publisher/Brand: U.S. Federal Government (Data.gov)

Overview

The U.S. Federal Government Data Catalog (Data.gov) is the primary catalog of open data from U.S. federal agencies, with additional datasets from state and local governments. It aggregates metadata and access links for a wide variety of public datasets across sectors such as health, education, environment, transportation, finance, and more.

Features

• Centralized dataset catalog for U.S. federal government data, with additional state and local datasets.
• Browse and discovery interface via the main Data Catalog page.
• Filter and faceted search options, including:
  • Location-based filtering
  • Topics and topic categories
  • Dataset type
  • Tags
  • File formats
  • Organization types
  • Organizations
  • Publishers
  • Bureaus
• Expandable vocabularies with “Show More” controls for:
  • Topic categories
  • Tags
  • Formats
  • Organizations
  • Publishers
  • Bureaus
• Dataset detail pages for individual resources (examples shown in the catalog listing):
  • United States Mint Annual Reports (Department of the Treasury)
  • Lottery Powerball Winning Numbers: Beginning 2010 (State of New York)
  • Electric Vehicle Population Data (State of Washington)
  • Iowa School Performance Profiles (State of Iowa)
  • Crime Data from 2020 to Present (City of Los Angeles)
  • Supply Chain Greenhouse Gas Emission Factors v1.3 by NAICS-6 (U.S. EPA)
  • Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications – National Data (SSA)
  • Warehouse and Retail Sales (Montgomery County, MD)
  • Dynamic Small Business Search (DSBS) (SBA)
  • Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (USITC)
  • Authorizations From 10/01/2006 Thru 06/30/2025 (Export-Import Bank of the U.S.)
  • Baby Names – State and DC Data (SSA)
  • Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011–12 (Department of Education)
  • U.S. Chronic Disease Indicators (HHS)
  • Fruit and Vegetable Prices (USDA)
  • Air Quality (City of New York)
  • Motor Vehicle Collisions – Crashes (City of New York)
  • Real Estate Sales 2001–2023 GL (State of Connecticut)
  • National Student Loan Data System (Department of Education)
  • Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) collection (Department of Transportation)
• Multi-level government coverage:
  • Federal departments and agencies
  • State governments
  • Local governments and cities
• Multiple data formats supported (filterable by format; specific formats not enumerated in the provided content).
• Open data focus: datasets are intended for public access and reuse, subject to each dataset’s specific terms.
• Programmatic access via API:
  • Catalog registry available through an API at /api/3.
  • API is CKAN-based, with documentation provided by the CKAN API docs at https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/index.html.

API

• Base registry API: /api/3 (CKAN API)
• API documentation: https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/index.html
• Supports programmatic search, access to dataset metadata, and interaction typical of CKAN-powered catalogs.

Security and Official Status

• Hosted on an official U.S. government .gov domain.
• Uses HTTPS for secure connections.

Pricing

• Not specified in the provided content; Data.gov is generally offered as a free public open data catalog, with no paid plans indicated here.