The DataCatalogs.org project has been launched by a broad coalition of stakeholders are in order to map of open data initiatives around the world. Leading open data experts are helping to keep these on line catalogs updated, including representatives from international bodies such as the World Bank, independent bodies such as the W3C and the Sunlight Foundation, and numerous national governments.

After the success of initiatives like the Obama administration’s data.gov and the UK government’s data.gov.uk, there is a new open data initiative from a local, regional or national government nearly every week somewhere around the world - from Chicago to Torino, Morocco to Moldova. Neil Fantom, Manager of the World Bank's Development Data Group, believes that the initiatives such as DataCatalogs.org gives greater visibility to public information, allowing easier discovery of related content from different publishers and making open data more valuable for users. “Thus, open data is public good but only if you can find it”, Mr Fantom added.

In addition, Andrew Stott, former Director of Digital Engagement at the UK's Cabinet Office underlined that this initiative also help those implementing data catalogues to find good practice to emulate elsewhere in the world. Beth Noveck, who ran President Obama's open government programme and is now working with the UK Government hopes that DataCatalogs.org grows "into a vibrant place to articulate priorities, find and mash up data across jurisdictions and curate data-driven tools and initiatives that improve the effectiveness of government and the lives of citizens”.

DataCatalogs.org was launched at the Open Knowledge Foundation’s annual conference, OKCon 2011, which brings together developers, designers, civil servants, journalists and NGOS for a week of planning, coding and talks. The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation which has played a significant role in supporting open data around the world, particularly in Europe.