Mandate ongoing data publication and updates

The ideal of online data is “real time” access: data should be made available as close as possible to the time it is collected. It is not enough to mandate the one-time release of a data set, because it becomes incomplete as soon as additional data is created and not published. In order to ensure the information published is as accurate and useful as possible, specific requirements should be put in place to make sure government data is released as close as possible to the time that it is gathered and collected.

While sometimes challenging, this kind of rapid publishing becomes less of a burden when combined with others measures for digitizing data collection and publishing, such as electronic filing (see Provision 21), central data locations (see Provision 18) and APIs (see Provision 20).

Examples of language for this guideline:

Here are examples of the language for this guideline as included in policies on this site. Please note that the selections of text below are imperfect, and you should check out their source policies to read them in context.