Data.gov - Open Up Government Data

Obama administration just announced data.gov, a centralized web site for hosting various dataset from government agencies. The dataset are categorized by topic/agency and available in multi-format.

It's definitely useful but there are some critics:

• Wired - Data.gov Launches to Mixed Reviews
• Ulitzer - U.S Government Launches Data.gov Open Government Initiative

From Wired article, there are few other non-government initiatives of collecting government data:

• Wired Wiki - Open Up Government Data - not actual data repository but directory of data-providing agencies
• USGovXML.com - private (actually one-man) attempt to collect US government data in XML format, quite amazing!