To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Commerce Department released four high value datasets that require considerable technical sophistication on the part of users--and patience. Some of the files are so large and cumbersome they're very difficult to open and use; others require a great deal of explanation--and you can currently only find those explanations by digging through the agency's site. Still other entries feature broken links or only contain a fraction of the information described on Data.gov. The Commerce Department says they're working on all of these problems, so hopefully we'll see an ...
Continue readingOGD: Homeland Security (but really just FEMA)
HHS releases Electronic Animal Drug Product Listing Directory
In 2007, Congress required the Food and Drug Administration to maintain an online database of drugs administered to animals, and get it online by June 2009. The Electronic Animal Drug Product Listing Directory does just that; this previously published data set (it's available on the FDA's site here) is one of the high value data sets released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
It's available in an Excel format; a lot of the more interesting information is not in the database; the last field contains links to detailed descriptions of the various drugs given to ...