From FAIR Research Data to FAIR Government Information

As one of the largest publishers of information and data in the world, the United States government has the potential to influence the widespread adoption of the FAIR Principles as a standard for curating information resources. Over the past decade, U.S. federal agencies have been increasingly using the FAIR Principles as a standard metric to ensure that research data funded by the government is curated and made available. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Data Management and Sharing Policy explicitly encourages federally-funded researchers to align their data management practices with the FAIR Principles. However, research data is a relatively small segment of federal government information dissemination. A breadth of products and published formats make up the larger digital government information ecosystem, ranging from ephemera such as pamphlets and PowerPoint slides to complex digital objects such as databases and interactive applications. Moreover, digital government information and its metadata are themselves data, making the ecosystem particularly amenable to a digital curation framework. This presentation provides a starting point for considering the wider U.S. digital government information ecosystem within the framework of FAIR. We first take a look at how U.S. government information dissemination has evolved over the past several decades as the federal government has transitioned from print to digital dissemination models. In doing so, we will highlight the current gaps in what is collected, described, made available, and preserved for future discovery and reuse. Next, we will explore how FAIR Principles can be applicable to the complex ecosystem of federal government information. We will present several examples and specific cases, analyzing them in relation to the FAIR Principles. Our goal for this project is to craft a model for applying FAIR Principles to our wider understanding of digital government information. We will close with a brief overview of a “possible future” in which curated U.S. government information is commonplace and contributes to social good worldwide and identify potential mechanisms to move us toward this vision.