Every year Washington state agencies publish a bunch of reports analyzing what's going on in the state. In 2014 there were at least 140 of them contributed to the State Library's very under-appreciated Depository program. Most of these are on topics requested by the legislature - policy questions that aren't quite ripe for decision yet, or accountability for key programs. Often they help legislative staff dive deeper into what's happening - looking at what the data say about broadband in rural areas, or the potential impact of electric cars in state fleets. But what if you want to slice and dice the data differently? What if you need to look at broadband in urban areas rather than rural? These reports are almost always based on a solid analysis of underlying data, but it's pretty unusual for the report to actually include the data on which it was based.
But what if they did? What if every published report filed with the State Library next year came with a data appendix in data.wa.gov that you could examine with the software of your choice? We already clean up the raw data and validate the relationships so we can produce the charts and tables in the narrative. Why not post our data at the same time as we publish the report?
Some programs - like the State of the Salmon - do this already. Some federal agencies like the FCC publish and even update their charts and tables as separate documents. When you're reading next year's crop of legislative reports, ask yourself where to find the data.