US President Approves OPEN Government Data Act (Title II)

On January 14, 2019, President Trump signed into law the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking (FEBP) Act (H.R. 4174, S. 2046), which includes the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act (Title II). The package passed Congress on Monday, December 31, 2018.

The OPEN Government Data Act requires all non-sensitive government data to be made available in open and machine-readable formats by default. It establishes Chief Data Officers (CDO) at federal agencies, as well as a CDO Council. The law’s mission is to improve operational efficiencies and government services, reduce costs, increase public access to government information, and spur innovation and entrepreneurship. This is a win for evidence-based decision-making within the government.

About the bill:

The federal government possesses an enormous amount of valuable public data, which should be used to improve government services and promote private sector innovation.

The OPEN Government Data Act seeks to:

• Define open data, machine-reliability, and open license in government
• Create standards for making federal government data available to the public
• Require the federal government to use open data to improve decision making
• Ensure accountability by requiring regular oversight by GAO
• Codify CDOs at all federal agencies and a establishes a CDO Council

The act is indirectly very important for LEI system in general, and for LEI.INFO. All more advanced data standards demand unambiguous digital identification of legal entities, which very frequently are the subject of the published data. We also believe in great benefits coming from assigning LEIs to government agencies, which are a specific kind of Legal Entities.