Tuesday, February 4, 2014 News

Of Presidential Budgets and Open Access

Open Access   ·   Open Data

On Monday, President Obama released his FY16 Budget, which lays out the administration’s policy and funding priorities for the coming year. We are pleased to note that key SPARC program priorities  – opening up access to federally funded research articles and data – continue to align with those of the administration, and are highlighted in the FY16 Budget.

Specifically, the President’s FY16 budget prioritizes open access to federally funded research outputs with the following language:

“The Budget continues to invest in efforts to open up Government-generated assets, including data and the results of federally funded research and development—such as intellectual property and scientific knowledge—to the public. Through these efforts, the Government can empower citizens and businesses to increase the return on investment with innovation, job creation and economic prosperity gained through their use of open Government data and research results. The use of this data and scientific knowledge has impacted the private sector, including fueling innovative start-up companies and creating American jobs, increasing the transparency of retirement plans, helping consumers uncover fraudulent charges on their credit card bills, assisting potential homebuyers in making informed housing decisions, and creating new life-changing technologies, such as leading-edge vaccines.” (pg. 74)

The Budget also includes other items specific to key SPARC priorities, including:

  • The Budget includes initiatives to improve the service we provide to the American public; to leverage the Federal Government’s buying power to bring more value and efficiency to how we use taxpayer dollars; to open Government data and research to the private sector to drive innovation and economic growth; to promote smarter information technology; and, to attract and retain the best talent in the Federal workforce. (pg. 8)
  • The Budget includes initiatives to improve the service we provide to the American public; to leverage the Federal Government’s buying power to bring more value and efficiency to how we use taxpayer dollars; to open Government data and research to the private sector to drive innovation and economic growth; to promote smarter information technology; and, to attract and retain the best talent in the Federal workforce (pg. 64)
  • It also increases support for ongoing initiatives—such as the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), PortfolioStat, Freeze, the Footprint, and Open Data—that have already had an impact on improving Government operations (pg. 69)
  • Through these efforts, the Government can empower citizens and businesses to increase the return on investment with innovation, job creation and economic prosperity gained through their use of open Government data and research results (pg. 74)
  • Opening Data to Spark Innovation – The Administration places a high priority on opening Government data as fuel for private sector innovation and public use.  In demonstrating its commitment to open data, the Administration has developed performance metrics to measure agency progress in reaching open data goals, provided tools to make it easier for Federal agencies to publish data, and released guidance to agencies on how to engage with the community to identify priority data sets for release. The Administration continues to invest in and support efforts to unlock Federal data sets with a high potential for economic impact, including in the areas of health care, energy, education, employment, public safety, tourism, and agriculture. (pg. 74-75)

The release of the President’s budget marks just the first step in the federal budget process, which will now continue with the House and Senate presenting their own versions of the budget.  As the budget process moves forward, we will continue to provide you with details on how SPARC priorities are represented. As ever, we welcome any questions you might have – please don’t hesitate to contact the SPARC office!

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