A New, Single Home for ED Data

Starting today, the data sets and content you’re used to seeing on data.ed.gov can be found on education.data.gov.

(Developers: Please note that the 16 available education data APIs were already hosted by data.gov. These URLs did not change and existing applications using these APIs should not be affected.)

Why the move?

In addition to saving the costs associated with hosting and maintaining a separate education data website, merging the information on data.ed.gov into the existing Data.gov Education Community will allow researchers, developers, and interested members of the public to meet all their education data needs in one central location.

Originally, we created the separate data.ed.gov portal because we wanted to provide the public with advanced features and visualization tools that were not yet available on Data.gov. Today, the Data.gov Education Community not only fully supports visualization and mapping technologies, but it benefits from the continual addition of new enhancements, tools, and features. A key new tool is an API “wizard” that will make it faster and easier to create APIs for existing and upcoming open datasets, increasing the ways developers can interact with this data.

Additionally, as part of the government-wide Digital Government Strategy and the Education Data Initiative, an increasing number of developers and data enthusiasts are looking to Data.gov as the central source for finding, analyzing, and working with government data. Ensuring that all education-related open data lives on Data.gov, instead of on a separate website, ultimately means that more people can find and interact with it, and that we can nurture a larger, stronger community of individuals focused around education data.

What moved?

Prior to today, the following 14 datasets lived exclusively on data.ed.gov. You can now find them on the education.data.gov developer page:

• Broadband Availability for U.S. Schools
• American Jobs Act: Modernizing America’s Schools and Putting Teachers Back to Work
• School Improvement 2010 Grants
• Investing In Innovation 2010 Applications
• Investing In Innovation 2010 Highest Rated
• Investing In Innovation 2011 Applications
• Promise Neighborhood 2010 Applications
• Promise Neighborhoods 2010 Grantees
• Promise Neighborhoods 2011 Applications
• Promise Neighborhoods 2011 Grantees
• Ready to Learn 2010 Applicants
• Teaching American History 2010 Applicants
• Teaching American History 2010 Grantees
• Early Learning Grants

What did not move?

As mentioned above, the URLs for existing education data APIs did not change. They were originally based off of data.gov and will continue to live there.

Currently, a developer page will continue to be hosted by ED.gov. Even as additional developer resources are added to the Data.gov Education Community, we will continue to maintain a presence at www.ed.gov/developers specifically for developers who work with education data.

What’s next for ED data?

In the coming months, look for new developer resources, including tutorials for beginners and one-pagers for those hosting app-building events and contests to inform participants about what open educational data is available and how to use it.

We will also continue to add new data sets, including FY12 grant information, to the Data.gov Education Community as it becomes available.

Do you have ideas for the types of educational data you’d like to see on Data.gov? Or developer resources you wish were available? Let us know in the comments!

 Marina Martin is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education

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