The White House today unveiled a new "Open Data" initiative that calls on the feds to make sure that, going forward, data is collected and created in an open and machine-readable format.

President Obama signed an executive order, while the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy released an Open Data policy that calls for government data to be more open and accessible so that entrepreneurs can tap into it to create the next big thing.

"We're making it easier for people to find the data and use it, so that entrepreneurs can build products and services we haven't even imagined yet," Obama said in a statement.

The White House pointed to the Global Positioning System (GPS), which was once only available to the military. Opening it up to the public jumpstarted the GPS business and led to the development of everything from aircraft navigation systems to location-based apps.

The Health Data Initiative, meanwhile, provides government-held data on hospitals, drugs, insurance products, healthcare costs, and more in machine-readable form. Yesterday, Medicare published data about what hospitals charge for common inpatient procedures, which the White House said is "a major step forward for hospital price transparency and accountability."

On Thursday afternoon, Obama is scheduled to meet with entrepreneurs at the Capital Factory, an Austin, Texas-based startup incubator that has been using open government data.

Don't expect to sign on to WhiteHouse.gov to see what the CIA and NSA have been up to lately, though. "Agencies must review the information collected or created for valid restrictions to release to determine whether it can be made publicly available," the policy said.

Open data is already in use across many other sectors. The Energy Information Administration released an API so that developers can incorporate energy stats into their products, the Department of Education has a College Scoreboard, an online tool to help families make decisions about choosing a college, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration API also provides access to the 5-Star Safety Ratings System.

To that end, the White House said today that the U.S. Chief Information Officer and the U.S. Chief Technology Officer will release free, open source tools on Github, which is intended to help U.S. agencies adopt these open standards.

Those agencies likely need all the help they can get. The government has faltered time and time again with efforts to modernize agency systems; one need only look at the recent mess at Veterans Affairs to see that in action.

Nonetheless, the White House said it will launch a new service on Data.gov in the coming months that includes improved visualization, mapping tools, better context to help locate and understand data, and "robust" API access.