Principles of Open Government Archaeology: Lessons from the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)
American archaeology is conducted under cultural resources protection laws, but how does archaeology meet the challenge of openness? The past decade saw development of the “open government” digital information paradigm for public availability of information that underpins the functions of governance. Open government data provide a base for the interested public to offer expertise in aspects of necessary analyses, and to derive further public value from reuse of government data in novel ways. The open government concept has affected the practice and communication of scientific data in regulatory regimes as far flung as climate science, health science, and archaeology, among many others. In 2007 the “eight principles of open government” were coined by a group of public advocates, followed rapidly by a mosaic of federal, state, and local initiatives. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a completely free, big data, open government data project, centered at several public institutions; DINAA embodies open government practices to develop a novel linked-open data network of archaeological site primary data and related records across the internet. Our disciplinary capacity to engage with the principles of open government will be addressed through DINAA interoperability assessments and experiments with open government data.