Today, President Donald J. Trump signed H.R. 4174, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which, as the White House release summarized, “improves evidence-based policy through strengthening Federal agency evaluation capacity; furthering interagency data sharing and open data efforts; and improving access to data for statistical purposes while protecting confidential information.”

Back on December 21, 2018, the United States Congress sent the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2017 to the President’s pen in a historic win for open government in the United States of America.

The Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act (AKA the OPEN Government Data Act) is now the law of the land.

Two canonical principles for open, digital government in the 21st century are now the default in the United States:

1. public information should be open by default to the public in a machine-readable format, where such publication doesn’t harm privacy or security
2. federal agencies should use evidence when they make public policy

As I’ve said before, this reform represents “a genuine opportunity to not only improve how the nation makes decisions but embed more openness into how the federal government conducts the public’s business.”

This is a historic, bipartisan win for open government data, after years of trying. It is a milestone for the open movement, codifying core principles into code.

Thank you to all of the advocates, legislators, watchdogs and journalists who played an essential role in making open government data the law of the land.