Infochimps is pleased to announce a recent import of all of the data from Data.gov!  Data.gov was one of the more exciting things to happen last year for the world community and it has had a big impact in the US and internationally by setting precedent for government data sharing.  We hope that these datasets’ inclusion in our collection increases the visibility for all these datasets and becomes useful for the world at large.

The fact that users can edit this data makes them much more usable and interesting.  Unlike Data.gov, users on Infochimps can upload datasets and even upload different versions of datasets to the site.  So when a dataset comes from the government in some messy, incomprehensible format, you can do what Infochimps user Ganglion did and upload a better version.  This type of Wikipedia style curation of datasets is where Infochimps got its name.  Because data drudge work (column titles, formatting issues, etc.) is fit for a chimp, this type of work should only be done once.  And may the result live on Infochimps!

Take a look at the Data.gov collection to get started.