Really interesting framing — "publicly open but practically inaccessible" is exactly the problem with most government data portals I've worked with.

The normalization layer is usually where 80% of the effort goes. Official sources often publish the same metric in 3-4 slightly different formats depending on the year or reporting entity, and reconciling those is tedious but essential before any comparison is meaningful.

What's your strategy for handling revisions? Government data sources frequently publish corrections 3-6 months after initial release, and keeping historical snapshots vs. always-current figures becomes a real design choice.

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