Data

What powers the project (and an easy way to contribute).

This chart shows a simple view of how our initial data flow can be crowd-sourced, aggregated, cleaned, and visualized across layers:

PINS Data Flow

Here is an embedded view of the initial data set (archived in mid-2022), which lives in Google Sheets:

Data - Project on Innovation in National Security

NOTE: When we created the App we connected the Data in new ways and started adding various new types of Entities. The easiest way to access the full list is via the App, but we will update this page with a representative data set in March or April 2023. Access to all Entities may continue to be restricted in certain circumstances depending on use. For more details, check out the Docs.

As we continue to experiment, we expect the following to happen:

Users will want to structure data in different ways (potentially creating different sub-elements of data and likely requiring a vast array of Google Sheets, which may become untenable)
Demands on the data from other applications (e.g. Graph, Map, Timeline and all their variations) will make using Google Sheets clumsy and very manual
We will likely move to BigQuery or some other Google Cloud data storage solution and that will spark a new array of activities in acquiring data (making it easier to bulk-add or co-mingle data sets) as well as making it available to applications.
Input options will likely also change, and we may look to create a dedicated application (maybe using Google Firebase or something else) to support interacting with data, particularly validation and tracking of validity.
We also hope that Government, Non-Profit, Academic and Commercial entities will find the data helpful, which will likely result in debates around what should be open data, what should be protected or private, and what might be licensed by DEF to different organizations. You can read more about our thoughts on licensing in the Docs.