HHS Open Data Initiative

Background: On the President's first day in office he signed the Open Government Directive which stated government should be more transparent, participatory and collaborative. There after all agencies including HHS issued their Open Government plan which included releasing massive amounts of data in an accessible format.  

Program background: Releasing non-identifiable health data is in of itself not enough to fulfill the Open Government Directive or have an impact on the health of communities and citizens. HHS spends billions of dollars to collect and store health data. Traditionally, that data has been hard to access, find, and use and is often been buried deep in agency websites. As a result the application and use of such data has been very low.  To maximize the potential of open government, releasing data on agency websites must also be accompanied by major outreach and community building efforts to educate the data entrepreneurs of the existence of the data and its use. This serious undertaking has to take place over a sustained period and must deliver impact.  

Evaluation Methods and Results:  The Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI) is a flagship HHS Open Government effort that fulfills the gaps in data access and application. In addition this effort has created an ecosystem and movement of innovators and entrepreneurs who are creating value with the data and are driving novel solutions. This effort has lead to the creation of an online challenge platform (the Health2.0 Developer Platform) where over 100 teams have competed for 21 different challenges with over $50,000 in prize money sponsored by government, foundations and private sector companies. The products launched out of this effort have significant potential for health communication and marketing over large diverse platforms such as search engines and mobile phones that may have tremendous reach.  

Conclusions: CHDI is an incredibly exciting new public-private collaboration that is encouraging innovators to utilize data made publicly available by HHS to develop applications that will help raise awareness of community health performance, spark action to improve performance, and empower individuals and communities to make informed choices about their health.  

Implications for research and/or practice: After participants complete viewing the panel they will have several specific examples of how to leverage open information, build an ecosystem and community, and better understand successes as well as gaps in marketing and communication aspects of open government.