The Obama administration is requiring all top government agencies to release information that has never been available to the public before.  Each government department is required to post three major collections of “high-value” information to the public.  The information will be available for easy access online.  Open government organizations are encouraged by the initiative.

One major piece of information that was previous unavailable for free is the the Medicare database.  The entire database can now be downloaded for free online by anyone.  Users can easily sort through the information by type of service provided and many other categories.

Previous administrations have released government information reluctantly and when they were forced to release information it was available only in hard copy form.  Information available online in easily sorted databases and spreadsheets makes the data much more usable and manageable.  Freely available information can be used to track government spending and provide ways to hold government agencies accountable by the public like never before.

The new information will be available on the government website data.gov.