Kundra said he doesn't know how many sources are available. The U.S. has more than 10,000 systems, some of which contain rivers of data but getting at it may take investments and more processing power to serve up the information, he said.

As the U.S. upgrades systems, a core requirement will be to ensure the new systems are capable of data sharing. But government transparency will be the "default," he said.

The Sunlight Foundation in Washington is running a , with some $20,000 in prize money, to build anything from client applications, iPhone applications, Web-based apps, working with federal data. The contest's first criteria: "Does the app help citizens see things that they see before the app existed?"

Sunlight Labs director Clay Johnson said that most of the government is now doing is consolidating data that is already public but is often difficult to find. He said that creating a catalog is no small thing considering that there may be may be forgotten gold mines of data in government systems.

What may be the test for the government over time is whether it is willing to release data that hasn't been easily available, such as financial disclosure forms for Senate appointed administration officials. "Don't just release the data that convenient for you to release, release the data that should be released," said Johnson.