Open Data

Open government data is a valuable resource that can be used by citizens and businesses of the state to fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery. Data is "open" when it is offered free of charge, without restrictive licenses, with good descriptive "metadata" so you can understand it, and is searchable and downloadable in a common, structured format readily usable by computer code.

Agencies share open data to achieve their missions more effectively. These are few of their reasons:

• Establish uniform, trusted data sources within their agencies.
• Ease data access for other agencies instead of creating data sharing agreements.
• Provide data to oversight agencies, the legislature, and the media.
• Communicate about the services they provide.
• Demonstrate transparency and openness to build trust and include the community in the process.
• Share data with the communities they serve so those communities can use the data to achieve their own goals.

Learn what open data is and how to use it in this Data Equity for Main Street course.

The Open Data Program invites agencies and the public to contact us at opendata@wa.gov for consultations about publishing, accessing, and using government data.

Where's the data?

• Data.wa.gov is the state's open data portal. Find citizen-accessible tabular data, data visualizations like charts and graphs, and a simple but powerful interface for programmers and data professionals in large and small organizations.
• Geo.wa.gov hosts the state's geospatial open data. It provides access to a wide range of products and services for state agencies, local government, tribal entities, and the public