Aug
Government Computer News (GCN) recently produced a special report: “Great dot-gov Web Sites 2009: 10 sites that take online government to the next level.” Science.gov, whose search is powered by this blog’s sponsor Deep Web Technologies, is on the list. The list includes sites that are meeting and exceeding Obama administration transparency goals.
Page 8 of the GCN article explains how “Science.gov breaks down stovepipes of research.”
[W]ith Science.gov, you don’t have to worry about which agency published the research. Led by the Energy Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the site offers a one-stop shop for searching U.S. scientific databases. At last count, you could do a single search of 38 data sources — or about 200 million documents.
In 2001, when they set out to establish a digital scientific library, DOE officials quickly realized that theirs wasn’t the only agency doing scientific research and that citizens would benefit from a cross-agency compilation of resources.
The resulting site represents a considerable coordination effort among numerous federal agencies. Besides OSTI, members of the Science.gov Alliance include the Agriculture and Interior departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Disclaimer: I consult for OSTI.
Tags: federated search
