The United States Federal Government, as part of the Open Government Initiative, has recently unveiled a new web portal for all types of government data. "Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets."

Currently, Federal, Executive Branch data is available, but more datasets are scheduled to be added.

There are a few GIS data sets available through the site. Users can limit their searches by file type including KML/KMZ for Google Earth and ESRI compatible formats. One nice feature is that Data.gov can be a one-stop location to search for geographic and non-geographic data.

Other online sources for Federal GIS data include: The National Map, Geospatial One Stop, and the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER, TIGER/Line, and TIGER-related products page.