The federal government launched Data.gov a little less than a month ago with raw databases, data extraction tools and widgets and pledged to bring "unprecedented access to government information." The White House said the site would allow "unfiltered access to government data streams in machine-readable formats."

At launch, the site offered 73 links to demographic, economic and environmental data files and tools that had already been available on federal government Web sites, some of them for years. Now the catalog offers nearly 300.

It's clear that the White House is going after the low-hanging fruit in the first month with datasets already available online on other federal government Web sites.

Let's hope they don't stop there. Government agencies hold much more information offline. Getting that data online and available through Data.gov would be real progress.

Have an idea for a dataset that Data.org should host? You can make a suggestion at Data.gov.

The site itself has a couple of big shortcomings that should be simple to fix. First, no RSS feed. Second, there's no counter to show you the number of user ratings for datasets.

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The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University just added credit union financial condition data to its impressive BankTracker Web application. Credit unions haven't been getting much attention, as journalists focus more on the large commercial banks. It's worth checking up on your local credit unions for a couple of reasons. One, credit unions are popular among minority groups and often play a big role in communities that haven't been served well by banks. Second, the assets of many credit unions are smaller than banks, so it only takes a couple of problem loans to hurt their balance sheets.

BankTracker is powered by the FDIC's Statistics on Depository Institutions data and National Credit Union Administration data. Get the data, and examine your local financial institutions. You might uncover some good stories.