Today, the Commerce Data Governance Board released a new publication: Generative AI and Open Data: Guidelines and Best Practices.

As discussed on the blog of the US Department of Commerce, “in late 2023, the Department of Commerce’s Commerce Data Governance Board launched the AI and Open Government Data Working Group, chaired by Dr. Sallie Ann Keller, Chief Scientist of the U.S. Census Bureau. The working group, consisting of AI and data experts throughout the Department of Commerce, was tasked with evaluating how the Department could enhance the creation, curation, and distribution of its open data assets to best meet the needs of users who leverage generative AI applications to interact with Commerce’s open data.”

Throughout 2024, the working group published the AI and Open Government Data Assets Request for Information (RFI) and collaborated with AI and data experts across government, the private sector, think tanks, and academia. These efforts resulted in the publishing of the guidance titled Generative Artificial Intelligence and Open Data: Guidelines and Best Practices.

What constitutes “Commerce’s open data”? According to the Background section within the guidance, “Commerce’s public data assets span over 150,000 individual open datasets and its open data assets span various formats, including textual, tabular, geospatial, imagery, audio, and video data”, published by several government agencies.

As discussed in the blog post, “this guidance provides actionable guidelines and best practices for publishing open data optimized for generative AI systems. While it is designed for use by the Department of Commerce and its bureaus, this guidance has been made publicly available to benefit open data publishers globally. The first version of the guidance, published on January 16, 2025, is envisioned as a dynamic resource that will be revised and updated with new insights, feedback, and other considerations.”

The core of the new guidance is Part II, where it discusses guidelines and best practices for documentation, data and metadata formats, data storage and dissemination, data licensing and usage, and data quality and integrity. I haven’t done a deep dive of it yet, but I’m intrigued to check it out – some of the concepts related to data governance and GenAI could be applicable to any organization. You can access the guidance here.

So, what do you think? Are you as intrigued as I am about a government guidance on generative AI and open data? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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