Google tool for searching public data like unemployment etc.

Google has recently launched a new tool that will allow one to search the public data with ease. In fact, the new tool will help the web user to find out the data that are placed at the government websites. Named Google Public Data, the tool will ferret out information from the federal government as well as the state and local administration. The proposition seems to be something that the advisors of President Obama have been looking for. Initially, the tool will start by digging up the data related to population and unemployment.

The effort has been welcomed whole heartedly by the different public interest groups in Washington. These groups have been urging to make the official data easily accessible to the common masses. However, the tool will take some time to become completely operative. After interacting with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau, Google will then work with departments like Environmental Protection Agency to bare statistics regarding the emission. Subsequently, Google will tread in other aspects of public data including graduation rate in the High Schools, number of wildfires, frequency of asthma, the salary of the bakers along with thousands of other topics. The service would be available in the ordinary Google search.   

The tool seems to be the result of a long term effort that Google has been making in order to make the government information more easily accessible in the internet. However, they were competing with Amazon and Wikipedia in this sector. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has urged the agencies to write down wikis to make the information accessible. Amazon, on the other hand, has launched a repository of data where the users can share the information with others. Google, meanwhile, has been urging the officials for the last couple of years to make their data more accessible.

The government departments too, need to take some actions. They were compelled to make the data accessible electrically due to the E-Government Act of 2002. However, the users complained that the sites of the government are not usually found in the search engine list due to the improper arrangements of the site. On the other hand, Google charged that certain sites are using embedded codes that were making their pages invisible. While commenting on the tool, President of Google Enterprise, David Girouard, said that the tool is reformatting the data to make it accessible more easily. In fact, the readers do not have to go through various pages to find out the specific content that they require. This is because the content would be categorized as per their relevance.

The tool will give the user the opportunity to search for specific data such as the rate of unemployment in Maryland. Once the user enters the term, a box will appear displaying the relevant public data that is available. The user can then select the category which is most relevant to the search that he or she plans to conduct and discover the information which they are looking at.
 

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