Data.gov Catalog Rights & Release Ledger

Turn a public catalog check into dated, deterministic evidence. This Actor remembers a bounded Data.gov Catalog API v4 query or identifier list and reports when catalog access, license, rights, publisher-release, or listed distribution metadata materially changes.

It is intentionally not another bulk scraper. It never downloads linked datasets, probes distribution URLs, follows harvest links, accepts customer credentials, or treats metadata as legal permission.

Paid outcome

• $0.003 — Dataset checked: one complete first baseline, unchanged result, or harvest-churn-only result.
• $0.020 — Material catalog change report: one complete before/after row containing every classified material change for that dataset. This replaces, rather than adds to, the lower event.

The exact Apify event names are dataset-checked and catalog-change-report. The Actor runs with Limited permissions, Standby disabled, platform usage included, and no default dataset-item event.

Invalid, unresolved, restricted/non-public, malformed, source-failed, and spend-limit-skipped records are uncharged and do not advance their baseline. Apify platform usage is included.

What changes count

The Actor distinguishes material publisher/catalog changes from ingestion noise:

• catalog title or publisher;
• publisher-supplied issued, modified, or accrual values;
• access level, license, or rights text;
• distributions added or removed;
• distribution location, format/MIME/type, checksum, or release dates.

A change only to Data.gov's last_harvested_date or harvest-record reference is labeled harvest-churn-only, not a publisher release.

Input

Choose one mode:

1. datasetIdentifiers: 1–25 exact identifiers. Each goes through official v4 search and an exact local identifier match.
2. query: 1–200 characters with maxRecords from 1–100. Optional organization and keyword filters are exact, bounded local filters.

Leave both selection fields and all query-only controls empty to run the bounded one-record climate example. Explicitly supplying both is rejected; orgSlug, keyword, and maxRecords require an explicit query and are rejected in identifier mode.

Keep a stable watchId for recurring runs. A watch refuses a changed query signature unless resetBaseline is explicitly set. Query top-N disappearance is never reported as dataset deletion.

The default example searches for one public climate result and normally completes in under five minutes.

Output and verification

Each paid dataset row includes the allowlisted current metadata, prior/current material and source-state hashes, a sorted complete material change set, a retrieval time, and a recordHash. Record hashes exclude run/retrieval metadata so equivalent evidence stays stable.

Contact points, author/maintainer identities, descriptions, raw responses, response headers, linked content, and hidden configuration are omitted. The run summary is stored separately and is not a paid dataset event.

Each source response is capped at 16 MiB and the run retains at most 8 MiB of raw catalog records before projection, preventing a bounded multi-page or identifier batch from accumulating unbounded source objects.

Source, rights, and privacy boundary

Production calls only https://api.gsa.gov/technology/datagov/v4/ using a Flintglade-managed encrypted DATAGOV_API_KEY. Customers never supply a key. The public DEMO_KEY is structurally rejected by the hosted Actor and exists only as a local smoke-test fallback.

Catalog metadata does not grant reuse rights, guarantee quality, prove a linked resource works, or establish publisher endorsement. Federal/public-domain assumptions must not be applied to non-federal or third-party resources; follow each dataset's actual terms.

This unofficial tool is not affiliated with or endorsed by Data.gov, GSA, or listed publishers.

Limitations

• No linked-file download or validation.
• No legal, compliance, or data-quality conclusion.
• No deletion claim from a capped query window or unresolved exact search.
• Baselines are scoped to the Actor's default key-value store and query signature.
• Data.gov v4 availability and metadata completeness remain upstream dependencies.

Support: support@flintglade.com