Work / Government & Public Sector
Open Data Management Platform

DataGov

A data management platform for government open data portals — catalog, discovery, and access infrastructure deployed for national governments worldwide.

100+
Governments
27,952+
Commits
data.gov
Portals
Global
Standard

Overview

DataGov is the data management system that powers open data portals for the United States (catalog.data.gov), Canada (open.canada.ca), the United Kingdom (data.gov.uk), Australia, Singapore, and over 100 national and city governments worldwide. Maintained under Open Knowledge Foundation governance since 2006, it is the global standard for government open data infrastructure — enabling agencies to publish, catalog, and make public datasets discoverable at national scale.

The Challenge

Governments generate vast quantities of public data — census records, federal spending, environmental monitoring, transit schedules, public health statistics — siloed across hundreds of agencies with no common discovery or access layer. Citizens, researchers, and businesses cannot find or use data they legally have a right to access. Open data mandates from the US (DATA Act), EU (Open Data Directive), and equivalent frameworks in Canada, UK, and Australia require governments to publish and maintain accessible data catalogs — but building that infrastructure from scratch at each agency, in each country, is duplicated cost with no public benefit.

What We Built

DataGov provides the full data portal stack: a metadata catalog for discovering datasets, a storage layer for hosting files and APIs, a search engine (Solr) for faceted discovery across thousands of datasets, and a REST API for programmatic access. The extension architecture supports custom metadata schemas for domain-specific data (geospatial, statistical, scientific), quality checks, data visualization previews, and integration with government identity systems. With 27,952+ commits across 18 years of active development, the platform has accumulated production hardening from deployments at the scale of the US federal government — a quality bar no agency could achieve by building in-house.

Results

  • 100+ — Governments. US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, and more
  • 27,952+ — Commits. 18 years of continuous production hardening
  • data.gov — Portals. Powers the US national open data catalog
  • Global — Standard. The recognized international open data infrastructure
More Work

Related case studies.

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