The California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) has launched its Open Data Portal initiative in order to increase public access to one of the State’s most valuable assets – non-confidential health and human services data. Its goals are to spark innovation, promote research and economic opportunities, engage public participation in government, increase transparency, and inform decision-making. "Open Data" describes data that are freely available, machine-readable, and formatted according to national technical standards to facilitate visibility and reuse of published data.