Federal Data Excellence
What makes public data great to work with? Answering that question led USAFacts and the Partnership for Public Service to develop standards for evaluating the quality of data products from a user's perspective, a community for public data stewards to share insights and challenges, and a recognition program to celebrate user-friendly government data. Welcome to Federal Data Excellence (FDE).
As a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that focuses on making data more intuitive and accessible, we work with federal data products every day. We know that open data is not necessarily the same as useful data and sought to discover what characteristics separate the merely available from the truly impactful.
Download the standards
Detailed user guide
Interactive standards with background, examples, and additional context
Quick reference
One-page checklist with all 22 standards
Through extensive research and engagement with federal experts, we identified 22 characteristics of excellent data products and organized them into four categories. These standards are applicable to the many kinds of public government data, yet specific enough to be useful come publication time. We hope that having a set of best practices will reduce the burden of deciding how best to present a data product that is focused on user needs.
Background
Federal Data Excellence focuses on the user experience of federal data products, not on policy decisions or recommendations. We believe that data — accessible, credible, transparent, and usable data — is fundamental to understanding what the government does and for making informed choices for the future. And while agency data is obligated to be open by default, data producers must take additional steps to make their products truly useful to the public.
How and where would you hope people implement these standards?
How and where would you hope people implement these standards?
Use this guide when preparing to package and share data with the public. Every new data product or refresh is an opportunity to consider what elements are included, how they connect to each other, and what form they take. We hope these standards provide a functional framework and a fresh perspective for evaluating and improving data products.
How were the FDE standards developed?
How were the FDE standards developed?
We began by reviewing existing resources inside and outside of government to see if existing standards dictated attributes of good data products. We then kicked off a series of engagements in 2024 with agency leadership, data product owners, and other federal data experts to verify the need for standards and understand use cases. Through small group sessions and two larger convenings, we presented five different versions of these standards to gather and incorporate feedback, test, and make needed adjustments. The result is a set of standards that are broad enough to be widely applicable but specific enough to guide decision-making.
How is FDE different than what's happening with the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM)?
How is FDE different than what's happening with the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM)?
When we began this project, we wanted to be sure that we were sufficiently different from other existing evaluation efforts. We concluded that focusing on best practices for packaging data for the public was sufficiently different from other data quality efforts, and that providing specific guidance in this area would fill a needed gap.
According to our research, other frameworks tend either to be oriented towards data quality processes that are invisible to the user, have broader aims than optimizing the user experience, or are more theoretical than applied.
For example, one of the three domains within the FCSM Framework for Data Quality is focused on utility, and lists elements related to the FDE standards like relevance, timeliness, and accessibility. However, FCSM is concerned with additional data quality measures, and its broader scope does not provide explicit guidance on the characteristics of a data product that make for a great user experience. While FCSM provided us with a useful framework for thinking about utility, we wanted to expand upon and operationalize it by identifying specific elements and best practices that contribute to a great user experience.
Recognition Program
Our goal for the recognition program is to spotlight excellent data products to inspire other agencies and teams to reimagine their own data products.
What were the 2024 FDE award winners?
What were the 2024 FDE award winners?
For the 2024 award program, we recognized the best data products and the teams behind their production for three different categories: financial (i.e., uses dollars), statistical (i.e., uses statistical methods and sampling), and administrative (i.e., reports counts of things without statistical adjustments).
Awardees were:
- Financial data product: foreignassistance.gov (Department of State and USAID)
- Statistical data product: the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA)
- Administrative data product: Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Dashboard (OPM)
We also are giving an honorable mention for the best static data product — one that does not provide an interactive experience but nonetheless delivers user-friendly information.
The honorable mention went to:
What were the scores for the products evaluated in 2024?
What were the scores for the products evaluated in 2024?
Federal Data Excellence is not a scorecard exercise, but a chance to recognize excellent work and gain anonymized insights into common areas for improvement. As such, we keep the nominations and the scores private.
In 2024, the high score was 89%, the mean was 61%, and the median was 66%.
Subscribe to the FDE newsletter and keep an eye out through 2025 for additional statistics and insights on what's working and what can be improved with federal data products.
How do you evaluate nominated data products?
How do you evaluate nominated data products?
Evaluation of 55 nominated data products from 40 agencies, offices, and bureaus took place in the fall of 2024. Using the standards shared here, one evaluator from USAFacts and one from the Partnership for Public Service independently judged each data product.
For the exercise, evaluators adopted the persona of a data-literate, curious person encountering the data product for the first time. Such a person would be busy and want to see the most important information placed front and center. They would not have significant experience navigating through complex site designs or ambiguous labeling schemes to find what they need.
Working standard by standard, the evaluators came together to reconcile their scoring. Differing evaluations that were unable to be reconciled were decided by a third evaluator.
Each of the 22 standards was weighted according to its positive impact on the user experience. Evaluators assigned points either in full or not at all, based on whether each standard was judged to have been satisfactorily met.
What's coming for FDE in 2025?
What's coming for FDE in 2025?
We'll recognize another batch of 2025 winners for excellence and plan to use an improved and expanded set of standards. We have several ideas about how to expand, refine, and make it more useful — and we want to share them with you.
Our long list of ideas includes evaluating how data is structured and the relative quality of an interactive data experience, and adding standards related to discoverability within a larger agency site and data readiness for artificial intelligence.
Reach out to us with questions or to share your experiences in implementing these standards at [email protected]. And be sure to sign up for the FDE newsletter to be notified when nominations close and to learn about opportunities to provide project feedback.
