Data Everywhere, and Nowhere

As you might imagine, being an ex-Report Analyst, Data Governance and Quality Analyst, and current Database Administrator, I am a tiny bit OCD about my data. If you didn't know our US Government is bloated, if you scroll down, you'll see it!

Sometimes, I am swimming in data, and others I can't find it!
Here's the public resources that I know about. Open to contributions.

Data Sources

Other Lists

These are other dataset lists. I only will compile things of interest to me, but... for broader audiences, there are bigger lists:

1. Awesome Datasets - https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets
2. University of Alabama - https://guides.lib.ua.edu/gis/datasets
3. Dateno Dataset Search - https://dateno.io/registry/catalog/cdi00001720/
4. Society for Science - https://www.societyforscience.org/research-at-home/large-data-sets/
5. Urban Data Catalog - https://datacatalog.urban.org/

News Events (Notable Data Quality Events)

Study: Government health datasets altered without documentation

The study finds that nearly half of the examined federal health datasets were altered. In most, the term “gender” was replaced with “sex.”

The Journalist's ResourceNaseem S. Miller

General Purpose

1. Kaggle - https://www.kaggle.com/
   Datasets may not be 100% raw data, but good enough in many cases. There's a variety of data, but it's really more of a data science community there. Good place to learn the craft
2. Tableau Public - https://public.tableau.com/app/discover
   https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/free-public-data-sets
   This is a visualization platform, but in some cases you can get your hands on the data.
3. Google Research (Search Engine) - https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/
4. Gapminder - https://www.gapminder.org/data/
5. AWS - https://registry.opendata.aws/
6. Smithsonian - https://www.si.edu/openaccess
7. Gallup - https://www.gallup.com/analytics/318923/world-poll-public-datasets.aspx

Machine Learning Training

1. UC Irvine ML Repository - https://archive.ics.uci.edu/

Amateur Radio

1. https://hamcensus.org
   Interesting project.
2. Ross Wardup - https://www.rwardrup.com/ham-radio-operator-distribution-us/
   He's also set up some other code projects, like Uniform Crime Report stuff.

Geospatial

1. PostGIS - https://postgis.net/ Foundational
   This one is FIDDLY! It's a Postgres configuration includes some functions to generate TIGER/Census Data Fetch and Load Scripts, which can (with some time) grab the most current data. It is a bit fiddly. I used a Docker image with Postgres 18 and PostGIS 3.6, did an apt-get install nano wget unzip postgis to install missing stuff that the scripts needed in the container.
2. ArcGIS/ESRI Living Atlas - https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/esri_ngda_datasets/

US Government... is really really big.

1. https://data.gov
   The US Government. However, it's not all in one place.
2. USA Spending - https://www.usaspending.gov/
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics - https://www.bls.gov/data/
4. NASA - https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/
5. Census Bureau - https://www.census.gov/data/datasets.html
6. GSA (General Services Administration) - https://open.gsa.gov/data/
7. NOAA - https://www.noaa.gov/nodd/datasets
8. Federal Emergency Management Agency - https://www.fema.gov/about/openfema/data-sets
9. Library of Congress - https://guides.loc.gov/datasets/repositories
10. Health and Human Services - https://healthdata.gov/
11. Homeland Security - https://www.dhs.gov/data
12. US Forest Service - https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php
13. National Science Foundation - https://www.nsf.gov/digital/data
14. Centers for Disease Control - https://www.cdc.gov/rdc/public-nchs-data/index.html
15. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health/datafiles
16. National Archives - https://www.archives.gov/open/available-datasets.html
17. US Patent Office - https://data.uspto.gov/home
18. National Park Service - https://www.nps.gov/subjects/science/science-data.htm
19. National Institute of Standards and Technology - https://www.nist.gov/adlp/open-data-program
20. Oak Ridge National Laboratory Landscan - https://landscan.ornl.gov/
21. National Gallery of Art - https://www.nga.gov/artworks/free-images-and-open-access
22. National Centers for Environmental Information - https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets
23. USGS - https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/
24. FBI - Crime Data Explorer - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/home
25. National Laboratory of the Rockies - https://www.nrel.gov/buildings/end-use-load-profiles
26. Digital.gov - https://digital.gov/topics/open-data
27. USDA - https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
28. National Center for Education Statistics - https://nces.ed.gov/
29. Social Security Administration - https://www.ssa.gov/data/
30. National Cancer Institute - https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/publications-data/dccps-public-data-sets-analyses
31. Department of Labor - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/research/public-use-datasets
32. Department of War - https://data.defense.gov/
33. Bureau of Economic Analysis - https://www.bea.gov/itable
34. Bureau of Land Management - https://www.blm.gov/about/data/National-Datasets
35. National Endowment for the Arts - https://www.arts.gov/grants/research-awards/publicly-available-data-sources
36. Bureau of Transportation Statistics - https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/bts-updates-national-transportation-statistics-12302025
37. Department of Energy - https://www.energy.gov/data/open-energy-data
38. Environmental Protection Agency - https://echo.epa.gov/
39. ClinicalTrials - National Library of Medicine - https://clinicaltrials.gov/
40. Federal Reserve - https://www.federalreserve.gov/data.htm
41. Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy - https://www.healthit.gov/data/data
42. HUD - https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html
43. National Institute of Mental Health - https://nda.nih.gov/
    "Under Review - aka datasets aren't fully...there...anymore."
44. Federal Election Commission - https://www.fec.gov/

Alabama Governments... not very open.

Big too, but terrible about open data access. Weakest open records law in the US.

1. Birmingham, AL - https://data.birminghamal.gov/dataset
2. ALEA Crime Statistics - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/home
3. Alabama Geographic Information Office - https://data-algeohub.opendata.arcgis.com/
4. University of Alabama Center for Advanced Public Safety - https://www.caps.ua.edu/analytics/downloads/datasets/public/
5. Alabama Public Health - https://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/data/

Political

1. Pew Research - https://www.pewresearch.org/tools-and-datasets/

International

1. CERN - https://opendata.cern.ch/
2. United Nations - https://data.un.org/
3. European Union - https://data.europa.eu/en
4. Our World in Data - https://ourworldindata.org/