Open Data Policy Guidelines

“Open Data” policies have been making their way through legislative bodies and executive orders with increasing frequency, especially since 2009. While those that have passed mark progress and serve as inspiration for other governments and advocates to approach this issue, we’re only just starting to really explore what open data policies can do, what broader issues they can address, and what open data can mean.

To move forward in grappling with those questions, we’ve created this series of Guidelines for Open Data Policies. We intend this more as a “living document” than as model legislation -- a menu of options for what can be contained within an open data policy. It provides sample provisional language packed with detailed explanations and use cases, drawn heavily from the important work of our peers in the transparency and open government space...