105 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. A. Magnuson, B. E. Dixon (eds.), Public Health Informatics and Information Systems, Health Informatics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41215-9_7 Data Sources and Data Tools: Preparing for the Open Data Ecosystem Edward Mensah and Johanna L. Goderre Introduction Social, legal, political, and technological changes have led to an expectation that data collected by or funded by the government for administration, research, and other activities should be widely available to the public. Public health and other organizations frequently face a mandate of data transparency from federal initiatives, funders, citizens, and benefciaries of the organizations’ programs. Technological advances have made it easier and more affordable for many types of gov- ernment and non-governmental organizations to collect, manage, store, publish, and use data about programs, clients, and systems. As organizations are increasingly called upon to deliver measur- able and effective services, qualitative and quan- titative facts—data—have become a high priority in every offce. When meaningfully aggregated, contextualized, and prioritized, these data form the building blocks of important messages— information—about the public health system. Information Systems (IS) constitute the physical, human, and electronic infrastructures that support the use of data in the service of discovery. History and Context of Data Legal, ethical, and regulatory responsibilities are attached to data at all stages, from collection through management and application. Any indi- vidual who creates or combines data and then makes it freely available to others for re-use or redistribution—open data—contributes to the larger ecosystem of transparent, accessible data. Released data must maintain reasonable privacy for any individual represented in the data, com- ply with the consent and license associated with the data, and meet other stipulations. Data may be released at varying levels of access—open, registered, or controlled (Fig. 7.1). Fully open access data will have no limitations to use the data. Recently, registered access data environ- E. Mensah University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: dehasnem@uic.edu J. L. Goderre (*) Essex Management, LLC, Rockville, MD, USA e-mail: jgoderre@essexmanagement.com 7 Learning Objectives 1. List and discuss the fve characteristics of good data. 2. List and discuss principles to strategi- cally evaluate data sources and data. 3. Describe publicly available data resources and tools. 4. Describe the process of preparing a dataset for analysis.