Open data portals have made government datasets more accessible, but discovering the right data to answer a particular question can remain a challenge. Once discovered, determining if and how datasets may be joined together present another hurdle to open data users. This discovery problem is compounded when work requires data from multiple jurisdictions. The open data landscape is a mosaic of individual portals, each with its own siloed jurisdiction. Without effective tools to navigate this landscape, opportunities to combine complementary datasets often go unnoticed, resulting in fragmented research efforts across the open data community.
Scout is an open source data discovery tool that helps users of open data find datasets across more than 100 open data portals worldwide. The tool recommends thematically similar datasets, and finds data that can be joined through common columns. Scout’s visualization features allow users to quickly assess whether a dataset meets their needs before downloading it. By enabling users to create persistent collections and explore relationships across more than 90,000 datasets, Scout helps connect the global civic technology community and foster its work.
Scout’s development has been shaped by community feedback gathered through BetaNYC’s public programs. Scout was launched during Open Data Week 2020, with major feature releases and workshops hosted during subsequent annual editions of Open Data Week and School of Data. In 2025, BetaNYC committed to provide stewardship of scout at its new home, scoutopendata.com