Google Advises the Administration on Open Government

On Friday, Google stepped into the administration’s discussion on its open government initiative by submitting comments [1]to the Office of Science and Technology Policy.  Previously, this conversation was dominated by non-profit organizations that have been working on these policies for years and other interested individuals.  However, Google’s recommendations to the administration point out that the private sector that provides search services for the public have an interest in these efforts.

Google’s recommendations are focused on making government information more searchable and accessible to the public.  Often, government sites and documents are hidden by the use of a robots.txt file.  Google makes clear that it must be able to crawl agency websites to index them stating that, “if we can’t find all public government content, citizens can’t either.”  Citizens rely primarily on search engines as their point-of-access for information they are looking for that may be held on a government website.

Among the suggestions Google makes is that websites utilize a XML Sitemap that inform search engines of pages that can be crawled, a more selective use of robots.txt files, and to encourage agencies to publish popularly requested data on agency websites and Data.gov.

Image by Flickr user dannysullivan [2]used under a creative commons license.

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