aid: data-gov name: Data.gov description: Data.gov is the United States federal government's open data catalog, operated by the General Services Administration (GSA) Technology Transformation Services. It indexes over 300,000 datasets, tools, and resources from federal, state, local, and tribal governments, as well as universities and non-profits. The catalog runs on CKAN 2.11 and exposes the standard CKAN Action API at catalog.data.gov/api/3/action for programmatic discovery and retrieval of datasets, organizations, groups, tags, and resources. Data.gov also publishes the federal Project Open Data (POD) schema (data.json) catalog endpoint at /data.json on every federal agency site, which Data.gov harvests into the central catalog. Related properties include inventory.data.gov (publisher-facing CKAN inventory), resources.data.gov (open data policy resources), and the api.data.gov shared API gateway used by 25+ federal agencies for 450+ APIs. type: Index image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/data-gov/refs/heads/main/apis.yml created: '2026-05-25' modified: '2026-05-25' specificationVersion: '0.19' tags: - Government - Open Data - Catalog - CKAN - Datasets - Federal - GSA - Open Government apis: - aid: data-gov:ckan-action-api name: Data.gov CKAN Action API tags: - Catalog - CKAN - Datasets - Open Data humanURL: https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/ baseURL: https://catalog.data.gov/api/3/action properties: - url: https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/ type: Documentation - url: https://catalog.data.gov/api/3/action/help_show type: APIReference - url: https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/ type: Standards description: The CKAN Action API exposes the full Data.gov catalog programmatically. It provides read access to packages (datasets), resources (file/URL distributions), organizations (publishers — federal agencies and sub-agencies), groups (topical categories), tags, and users. The API is a single endpoint family at /api/3/action/{action_name} accepting GET (for simple read calls) and POST (JSON body) for any action. Key actions include package_search, package_show, package_list, organization_list, organization_show, group_list, group_show, tag_list, resource_show, and current_package_list_with_resources. Responses are wrapped in {success, result, help} envelopes. Read access is anonymous; write actions require an API key (Data.gov restricts write access to authorized agency publishers). - aid: data-gov:project-open-data name: Project Open Data (data.json) Catalog API tags: - Open Data - DCAT-US - Federal - Catalog humanURL: https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/ properties: - url: https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/ type: Documentation - url: https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/ type: JSONSchema - url: https://github.com/GSA/project-open-data-dashboard type: SourceCode description: Every U.S. federal executive branch agency is required by the Open Government Data Act of 2018 (and predecessor OMB M-13-13) to publish a public enterprise data inventory as a JSON document at /data.json on its primary domain. The format follows the DCAT-US 1.1 schema (Project Open Data Metadata Schema), an extension of W3C DCAT. Data.gov harvests these /data.json endpoints on a regular cadence and ingests records into the central CKAN catalog. The schema defines a Catalog containing Dataset records with required fields (title, description, keyword, modified, publisher, contactPoint, identifier, accessLevel, bureauCode, programCode) and optional distribution records (downloadURL, accessURL, mediaType, format). - aid: data-gov:datajson-harvester name: Data.gov Harvester (datagov-harvester) tags: - Harvesting - Catalog - Ingestion humanURL: https://harvest.data.gov/ properties: - url: https://github.com/GSA/datagov-harvester type: SourceCode - url: https://harvest.data.gov/ type: Portal description: The Data.gov harvester service ingests dataset metadata from federal, state, local, and tribal data.json endpoints, CKAN sources, and other CSW/WAF sources on a scheduled cadence and writes records into the central catalog. It is a publisher-facing service (not a public API for consumers) but its source code is open at GSA/datagov-harvester and it documents the harvest source types, job schedules, and validation rules used by Data.gov. - aid: data-gov:inventory-api name: Inventory.data.gov CKAN API tags: - Catalog - CKAN - Publisher - Inventory humanURL: https://inventory.data.gov/ baseURL: https://inventory.data.gov/api/3/action properties: - url: https://docs.ckan.org/en/2.11/api/ type: Documentation - url: https://github.com/GSA/inventory-app type: SourceCode description: Inventory.data.gov is a second CKAN instance (also running CKAN 2.11) used by federal agencies as a publishing inventory before public release on catalog.data.gov. Most actions require authorization, but the same CKAN Action API surface is available at /api/3/action for authenticated publishers to manage their agency's dataset inventory. maintainers: - FN: Kin Lane email: info@apievangelist.com common: - type: GitHub url: https://github.com/GSA/data.gov - type: GitHubOrganization url: https://github.com/GSA - type: SourceCode url: https://github.com/GSA/catalog.data.gov - type: Portal url: https://data.gov/ - type: Catalog url: https://catalog.data.gov/ - type: Documentation url: https://resources.data.gov/ - type: Strategy url: https://strategy.data.gov/ - type: Blog url: https://data.gov/news/ - type: Twitter url: https://twitter.com/usdatagov - type: Standards url: https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/ - type: Legislation url: https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ435/PLAW-115publ435.pdf - type: Contact url: https://data.gov/contact/ - type: Privacy url: https://data.gov/privacy-policy/ - type: TermsOfService url: https://data.gov/privacy-policy/#data-policy include: [] score: tier: 1 rationale: Data.gov is the canonical U.S. federal open data catalog, mandated by the OPEN Government Data Act of 2018. It exposes the full CKAN 2.11 Action API at catalog.data.gov/api/3/action, indexes 300,000+ datasets from across federal, state, local, and tribal governments, defines the DCAT-US (Project Open Data) metadata standard used by every federal agency's /data.json endpoint, and is operated openly with all infrastructure code on github.com/GSA. The breadth of downstream data, the open-source posture, the legal mandate behind the catalog, and the standardization role (DCAT-US) place it firmly in Tier 1.