I'm trying to compare the relative change in availability of data before and after open government initiatives. Can anybody point me to how many data sets were available (by type/department or agency) *prior* to data.gov versus post? In other words, on the day data.gov launched, how many data sets were available, and how many were new (meaning previously not published). It's hard to know which data sets are *new* vs simply available on data.gov, in addition to the originating agency. Hopefully this isn't a FOIA request--yuck!
Thanks
My personal thoughts only
I suspect your question would be nearly (actually extremely) impossible to answer. Datasets come in all shapes and sizes, some are simple Excel spreadsheets that are located on various program websites and pages within a larger website, while others are complex statistical datasets that have only been thought as something of interest to researchers but now with open government, more people are learning the value of data and exploring this data in new and interest and relavent ways. Still others may have only been available as PDF and not machine-readable and agency representatives then republished the data in a machine-readable format.