MSHA publishes comprehensive mine safety data as part of Open Government initiative

[Omaha Steve]

ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration today announced the publication of comprehensive data regarding safety and health records of the nation’s mines. These downloadable files are available to the general public through MSHA’s website at http://www.msha.gov/OpenGovernmentData/OGIMSHA.asp and have been submitted for publication through the federal government’s http://www.data.gov portal. The data release is part of the Labor Department’s ongoing commitment to the administration’s Open Government initiative.

The data sets contain all of the agency’s public data from calendar year 2000 to the present regarding mine locations, accidents, injuries, production, violations and inspections. Additionally, these sets contain information about serious violations that publicly-traded mining companies must include in their public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Only private, personal information and trade secrets may be excluded.

“President Obama has directed all federal agencies to make data more readily available to meet the administration’s commitment of more transparency and accountability,” said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. “Over the coming months, MSHA intends to make even more of our public data available for downloading through the Data.gov portal.”

Additional data from the Department of Labor, including a searchable online enforcement database, is available at http://www.dol.gov/open.

http://www.msha.gov/OpenGovernmentData/OGIMSHA.asp

The President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government
The President’s first executive action, the Open Government Memorandum called for more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government.

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. ( see more...)

In conjunction with this effort, MSHA is pleased to provide the following data sets for your use. We have compressed each of the data files (.zip) to speed up the downloading time. The definition files are .txt. All of the data sets are text delimited files. The delimiter is a vertical bar (|). Each file's first row is a header containing the names of each field. Definitions of each of the fields in a data set are provided in a separate link.

How to work with the Definition files (.txt):

* Save file as a TXT file.
* Open your spreadsheet.
* Open and then copy the TXT file to your spreadsheet.
* Save the spread sheet.


How to work with the Data files (.zip):

* Click/Save Target/File to your PC.
* Unzip the files
* Create a data base table by importing the data file.
* Choose pipe delimited <|> for the data as the file type.
* Save your work.


These files will be updated on a weekly basis.

Please note that the updates are a complete replacement of the current files. You will need to overright and data sets you have created before in order to prevent duplicate records.
Data Sets - data as of 9/2/2010

(All Sets include data for the past 10 years, starting in 2000)
(New data sets will be noted with an *)

- Simply right click and save to your pc.

* Accident Injuries Data Set

- Definition File - PC7014 Report on 30 CFR Part 50 (Yellow Jacket) (PDF)


* Employment/Production Data Set (Yearly) (Coal Only)

- Definition File (MNM Operators are not required to report production)


* Employment/Production Data Set (Quarterly) (Coal Only)

- Definition File (MNM Operators are not required to report production)


* Inspections Data Set

- Definition File


* Mine Addresses of Record Data Set

- Definition File (Includes Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed Mines)


* Mines Data Set

- Definition File (Includes Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed Mines)


* Violations Data Set

- Definition File (Does not include Vacated Violations) (includes Type_Action1)


* All updates are complete replacements of each of the files.