Free to use data
Multi-topic or Multi-regional data sites
These sites list political, economic, demographic data and other types.
World Statistics http://world-statistics.org/index.php from Jean-Michel Durr. "World Statistics is a new portal that gives free and easy access to data provided by International Organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and Eurostat"
United Nations data
UN general data page https://data.un.org data on everything, including data from most of the data sources mentioned below.
Keep this in mind: The copyright page of data.un.org https://data.un.org/Host.aspx?Content=UNdataUse says "All data and metadata provided on UNdata’s website are available free of charge and may be copied freely, duplicated and further distributed provided that UNdata is cited as the reference."
Unfortunately, most other UN sites say this "The United Nations grants permission to Users to visit the Site and to download and copy the information, documents and materials from the Site for the User’s personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute them or to compile or create derivative works therefrom..." I use data.un.org for all data.
UN Social and Economic Commissions https://unstats.un.org/home/international_agencies/ lists various regional commissions and their data pages.
UN Population Programme, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, statistics division https://www.unescap.org/our-work/statistics has basic demographic data for 57 Asia and Pacific countries, such as population, growth rate, infant mortality, urban population, gdp per capita. Data completeness varies considerably by country. Data are also presented by individual country (i.e., 57 individual data files)
Millenium Development Goals Indicators https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/stats.shtml can get a variety of data here
Data at Unicef https://data.unicef.org data on women, infant, child indicators of health.
Statistical yearbook https://unstats.un.org/UNSDWebsite/Publications/StatisticalYearbook/ most recent and access to previous yearbooks.
FAO stat https://www.fao.org/statistics/en/ has data on agriculture, food and nutrition, population, plants, animals, etc
Also see hunger and food insecurity in the world https://www.fao.org/hunger/en/ which has tables in pdf format.
FAO copyright page https://www.fao.org/contact-us/terms/en/ says "Except where otherwise indicated, content may be copied, printed and downloaded for private study, research and teaching purposes, or for use in non-commercial products or services, provided that appropriate acknowledgement of FAO as the source and copyright holder is given and that FAO's endorsement of users' views, products or services is not stated or implied in any way."
ILO labor statistics data https://ilostat.ilo.org includes "Yearly statistics of Employment, Unemployment, Hours of Work, Wages, Labour Cost, Consumer Price Indices, Occupational Injuries, Strikes and Lockouts" 1969 to current. Also, "Monthly statistics of Employment, Unemployment, Hours of Work, Wages, Consumer Price Indices. 1976 to current. Completeness of data for yearly and monthly varies by country, for example, some countries only have data for 1990 to present, some earlier.
While the UN has plenty of data, there is a possibility that some of it's data may be biased. For example, see UN Watch, which says "UN Watch notes that the disproportionate attention and unfair treatment applied by the UN toward Israel over the years offers an object lesson (though not the only one) in how due process, equal treatment, and other fundamental principles of the UN Charter are often ignored or selectively upheld." https://unwatch.org/about-us/mission-history/ One can't help but wonder whether this bias extends to the UN's data. Just to mention, the UN Watch also says "We believe that even with its shortcomings, the UN remains an indispensable tool in bringing together diverse nations and cultures."
Other
World Bank has a data page https://data.worldbank.org with lots of data. Their terms of use for data sets page http://go.worldbank.org/OJC02YMLA0 says "You may extract, download, and make copies of the information contained in the Datasets, and you may share that information with third parties." and then lists various conditions. There are also some specifications on how you attribute the data sets.
A couple of WB data sets are:
Ease of Doing Business http://www.doingbusiness.org/ "objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 185 economies and selected cities at the subnational level"
OECD data page http://stats.oecd.org/ a bunch of variables on OECD countries, about 35 of them.
Also see:
OECD's Society at a glance http://www.oecd.org/social/societyataglance.htm various data for OECD countries.
Asian Development Bank statistics page http://www.adb.org/data/statistics Has data on a number of topics, such as population, poverty, environment. See for example the key indicators page, which has population, health, education, employment, over time.
African Development Bank http://www.afdb.org/en/ has a statistics page. Click on "knowledge" and then statistics. Data on human development indicators, macroeconomic indicators and other economic indicators. There are tables showing cross country comparisons and individual country tables.
The African Development Bank now also has the Open Data For Africa http://opendataforafrica.org/ Can get data and make charts for a wide variety of variables. This is open data: the terms and conditions say "Users are free to copy, distribute, disseminate or include the data in other products for commercial and/or noncommercial purposes at no cost." (but users should list the source when using the data)
The Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRTCIC), at http://www.sesric.org/ provides a variety of data about its member states. These fifty-seven states include Afghanistan, Bahrain, Chad, Egypt, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Turkey and Uzbekistan, amongst others.
The Economic Commission for Latin America http://www.cepal.org/es has statistical yearbooks with data on economics, social welfare, social conditions. For English speakers, from the home page, click on English and then can click on Data and Statistics, or on Publications and then Statistical Yearbook.
Eurostat http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat has all sorts of stuff.
The Legatum Prosperity index http://www.prosperity.com/ kind of a general overall index, including economic and other quality of life factors.
The Open Data Hub of the European Union https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data The European Commission Data Portal provides access to open public data from the European Commission. It also provides access to data of other Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies at their request.
Sustainable Society Foundation http://www.ssfindex.com/ presents the Sustainable Society Index, SSI, every two years. The SSI includes Human, Environmental and Economic Wellbeing. The data are here http://www.ssfindex.com/data-all-countries/ The data set lists indicators from a variety of areas like pollution, education, employment etc., from 151 countries. There are also interactive maps.
Indices of Social Development (ISD) http://www.indsocdev.org/ "brings together 200 indicators, synthesising them into a usable set of measures to track how different societies perform along six dimensions of social development: civic activism, inclusion of minorities," etc. Data from 1990 to 2010. Supported by World Bank, site hosted by International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague
Focus Economics http://www.focus-economics.com/ has data for 76 countries, 20+ indicators. Data for the past 5 year period can be accessed for free on their indicator and country pages
Demographic data
The sites listed here are mainly demography sites, but have other data as well.
UN data, world population prospects http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=PopDiv
Population Reference Bureau http://www.prb.org/ Click on the World Population Data Sheet, or the data finder page http://www.prb.org/datafinder.aspx for some basic demographic data on world countries.
WHO Global Health Observatory (GHO) data http://www.who.int/gho/en/
Economic data
The sites listed here are sites mainly about economic data, but have other data as well.
Groningen Growth and Development Centre http://www.rug.nl/ggdc/ "The Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) was founded in 1992 within the Economics Department of the University of Groningen by a group of researchers working on comparative analysis of economic performance over time and across countries. ... The GGDC provides unique information on economic growth and development in the form of easily accessible datasets, along with comprehensive documentation. These data are publically available"
One of their tables is the Penn World Tables http://www.rug.nl/ggdc/productivity/pwt/ This "is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 182 countries between 1950 and 2014."
IMF has a data page http://www.imf.org/en/data lots of data.
The world economy statistics http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm Historical GDP per Capita for well over 100 countries, up through 2014.
The original site was here http://www.theworldeconomy.org/statistics.htm This book is from Angus Maddison, at the OEDC. Very interesting data, including very long term data. For example, Table 1-3 Level and Rate of Growth of GDP: World and Major Regions, 0-1998 A.D., and Figure 1-4 Comparative Levels of GDP Per capita: China and West Europe, 400-1998 A.D These are samples from the book.
ECONOMIC FREEDOM OF THE WORLD Annual Report by the Fraser Institute. http://www.fraserinstitute.org/ The reports can be found on the Research and News page, in Economic Freedom. The summary index is based on 23 components designed to identify the consistency of institutional arrangements and policies with economic freedom in seven major areas, including size of govt, structure of markets, freedom to trade with foreigners, and other... See the freetheworld reports page http://www.freetheworld.com/reports.html that also lists the current report, and earlier reports, and research generated from the economic freedom of the world.
The data are also here http://www.freetheworld.com/datasets_efw.html
INTERSTATE STATISTICAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES. http://www.cisstat.com/ see the Main Macroeconomic Indicators page http://www.cisstat.com/eng/macro0.htm The pages for individual countries have annual data from 1995 to 2012 on indicators such as GDP, CPI, Capital Investments, and so on.
INDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM http://www.heritage.org/index/ measures the level of freedom and prospects for growth in our global economy. The Index is a practical reference guide to the economies of 161 countries. This site links to the book. You can see the rankings of the countries, including rankings from 1995 through current.
McKEEVER INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC POLICY ANALYSIS http://www.mkeever.com/ includes ratings of economic policies of about 27 countries. Specifically, the ratings look at whether the policies facilitates or obstruct wealth creation.
Luxembourg Income Study site http://www.lisdatacenter.org/ especially see the LIS key figures, "Summary measures for all datasets in the LIS archive are reported." such as income inequality, relative poverty rates, poverty rates for children. These tables are free. The actual data is free to academic researchers in member countries, and to students world wide.
Global Competitiveness Report http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/ ranking countries. "The Global Competitiveness Report is a contribution to enhancing our understanding of the key factors which determine economic growth, and explain why some countries are so much more successful than others in raising income levels and opportunities for their respective populations, and in joining the upper ranks of international competitiveness. Unfortunately, no central page for these reports, so need to search for other years."
Inequality Project http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/ has a data page. UTIP is a small research group concerned with measuring and explaining movements of inequality in wages and earnings and patterns of industrial change around the world."
UNCTAD World Investment Report http://unctad.org/en/Pages/DIAE/World%20Investment%20Report/World_Investment_Report.aspx includes data sets such as Inward FDI Stock as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product, and many others.
World Income Inequality Database https://www.wider.unu.edu/project/wiid-world-income-inequality-database "The UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database (WIID) collects and stores information on income inequality for developed, developing, and transition countries." From the United Nations University. The last update is from 2014.
The Standardized World Income Inequality Database http://fsolt.org/swiid/ from Frederick Solt, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa. https://clas.uiowa.edu/polisci/people/frederick-solt He says this is a database using the WIID, plus a bunch of other data, to "maximize the comparability of income inequality data while maintaining the widest possible coverage across countries and over time."
Another varient is the worldinequality.org data set, but it's currently (1/16/17) unavailable
International Development Statistics (IDS) online databases on aid and other resource flows http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/17/5037721.htm data on donor aid.
The World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world) http://wid.world/ aims to provide open and convenient access to the most extensive available database on the historical evolution of the world distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries.
PovCalNet http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/home.aspx "PovcalNet is the Bank’s interactive Open Data tool for poverty and inequality measurement"
Credit-Suisse has this Global Wealth Report and Data https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html The current year appears in pdf, but previous years are in excell.
The 2016 report is ummarized here https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/news-and-videos/articles/news-and-expertise/2016/11/en/the-global-wealth-report-2016.html
Political data
Some research indicates that change is related to governments. Specifically, successful change requires the presence of stable and flexible political systems. I'm not sure there is data on this exact topic, so these sites have data that might be indicators of state stability or flexibility. A number of these sites focus on political or economic freedom.
Bertelsmann Transformation Index http://www.bti-project.org/en/home/ another political index of some sort
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) http://www.cses.org/ "collaborative program of cross-national research among election studies conducted in over fifty consolidated and emerging democracies. The goals of this unique program of research are threefold: illuminate how electoral institutions constrain the beliefs and behaviors of citizens to condition the nature and quality of democratic choice as expressed through popular elections; understand the nature of political and social cleavages and alignments; and shed light on how citizens, living under diverse political arrangements, evaluate democratic institutions and processes." They can look at "satisfaction with the performance of democracy: how do citizens respond to varying institutional forms of democracy?"
Fragile State Index http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/ Indicators of risk
Freedom house http://www.freedomhouse.org/ especially see their country ratings page, which is "an annual assessment of state state of freedom by assigning each country and territory the status of "Free," "Partly Free," or "Not Free" by averaging their political rights and civil liberties ratings. This data is available as html, excel and pdf, for 1972/73 to the current year.
Global Integrity http://www.globalintegrity.org/ Reports. "The Report evaluates both anti-corruption legal frameworks and the practical implementation and enforcement of those frameworks, and takes a close look at whether citizen can effectively access and use anti-corruption safeguards."
The Polyarchy Scale http://www3.nd.edu/~mcoppedg/crd/datacrd.htm The Polyarchy and Contestation Scales for 1985 and 2000, and Contestation and Inclusiveness, 1950-2000, two measures of democracy.
The Center for Systemic Peace http://www.systemicpeace.org/ has a bunch of data sets including the Polity IV (governance), armed conflict, terrorists, and more. Look at other data on the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute https://www.sipri.org/databases has data on a number of topics, including military expenditure and a few more.
Transparency International corruption perception index http://www.transparency.org/ See "What we do" then Publications. Versions from 2008 and before are available at Internet Center for Corruption Research http://www.icgg.org/ The TI site also has a global corruption barometer and a bribe payers survey.
World Audit http://www.worldaudit.org/ lists data on democracy, political rights, civil liberties, corruption. The civil liberties and political rights are Freedom House data (described above).
World bank governance indicators http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home data on corruption and other governance indicators. This data set is also listed at the World Bank Research Data Sets described above. The variables in this data set are: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption.
Women in Parliments http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm from the InterParlimentary Union. Data on number and percent of women in parliments, by region and by country. Looks like data from 1998 through current.
Vision of Humanity http://www.visionofhumanity.org/ from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a non profit think tank. http://economicsandpeace.org/ . The Vision of Humanity has a couple of indexes, including the Global Peace Index, Terrorism Index, and peace indexes for a couple of countries.
Global Terrorism Database http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world since 1970
Department of Peace and Conflict Research http://www.pcr.uu.se/ houses a whole bunch of data at their data page http://www.pcr.uu.se/data/ such as the Data on Armed Conflict, and a lot of other conflict type data.
Conflict and Security Indices: A Summary of Open-Source Data http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA494834 this 2008 paper by Pavlovic, Nada J. ; Blackler, Kristen ; Mandel, David R. reviews a bunch of measures of conflict and security indicators.
Correlates of War http://www.correlatesofwar.org/ includes data on war, but also religion and some other stuff
Country Indicators for Foreign Policy (CIFP) http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/ see the country ranking tables, and the indicator descriptions for explanations. Many variables are ranked from 1996 to 2000, for many countries. Variables include armed conflict, gov stability, militarization, demographics, and others.
The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) https://www.prio.org/Data/ have a number of data sets on various topics. Of particular interest is that they offer data used in publications, that people can download and duplicate the published research. PRIO also has research available.
Social data
Unesco statistics about education http://data.uis.unesco.org/ also science, technology, communication
WORLD DATABASE OF HAPPINESS http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/ This is "an ongoing register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life. It brings together findings that are scattered throughout many studies and provides a basis for meta-analytical studies." The data are available as an spss file from the author. Also, click on Finding Reports and then Rank reports of Happiness in Nations. This leads to a table showing a list of countries and their average happiness. You can also go to Happiness in Nations, then Search Findings by Item Type and some of the questions have data for a large number of countries.
Barro-Lee education data set http://www.barrolee.com/data/dataexp.htm and http://databank.worldbank.org/Data/Views/VariableSelection/SelectVariables.aspx?source=Education%20Statistics#
UN Refugee agency http://www.unhcr.ch/ has data on refugees, in pdf format, http://www.unhcr.ch/fr/services/chiffres-et-statistiques.html
Ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty_pages/romain.wacziarg/papersum.html fractionalization data available here, as well as a paper, by Romain Wacziarg and others. Fractionalization is presented for three factors: ethnic, linguistic and region. Data for each country varies from 1983 (e.g. Angola) to 1998 (e.g., Austria), but seems only for one year for each country. Overall, there is high correlation between ethnicity and language (0.63) but low correlation between language and religion (0.24) and between religion and ethnicity (0.14). That is, ethnicity and language seem tied together, but religion seems independent. The paper is from 2003.
Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF) Indices for 1961 and 1985 http://weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/data.htm Dr. Roeder writes that "A common interpretation of the index is that it is the probability that two individuals chosen at random from the population (country) will be from different ethnic groups." There is high correlation between Roeder's ELF and Wacziarg et al's ethnic (0.79) and language (0.75) fractionalization, but low between ELF and religious (0.33) fractionalization.
Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2001/03/annett.htm includes a data set showing fractionalization of a country's population (along ethnolinguistic and religious dimensions) . The ratings are listed here http://humandevelopment.bu.edu/dev_indicators/show_info.cfm?index_id=234&data_type=1 paper is from 2002
Reporters Without Borders http://en.rsf.org/ has worldwide press freedom index 2002 to current.
Quality of Life http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf Quality of life data for 2005, includes data. The data are also in this file http://gsociology.icaap.org/data/PD_useful.xls available on my data sets page.
Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, 2015 http://reports.weforum.org/travel-and-tourism-competitiveness-report-2015/ from World Economic Forum
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life http://www.pewforum.org/ has a lot of data on religion. Their data are free to use for research, academic, but with conditions.
The Fraser Institute has this project "Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom" https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/towards-a-worldwide-index-of-human-freedom from January 2013, which measures economic and also personal freedom, including religion. A table showing data is in chapter 3
Crime data
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime http://www.unodc.org/ has a section on data and analysis, including crime statistics http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime.html
International Centre for Prison Studies http://www.prisonstudies.org/ has world prison briefs where you can get data on prison totals, rates, and other related data. This is from Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London
The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics http://wp.unil.ch/europeansourcebook/ Crime and criminal justice data. This is a wordpress site of The University of Lausanne.
National and international well being and progress
OECD's Measuring the Progress of Societies http://www.wikiprogress.org/ OECD project.
Measuring national well-being http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/index.html Currently archived. Last updated December 2015.
Gross National Happiness http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/ Centre for Bhutan Studies
Canadian Index of Wellbeing https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/
Social Progress Imperitave http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/ "The Social Progress Index is an aggregate index of social and environmental indicators that capture three dimensions of social progress: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. " One way to get to the report is to go to the faq, then click on "What does the 2016 Global Social Progress Index tell us?"
I'm not exactly sure who this organization is, other than they say it's funded by philanthropies and corporations. There is no clear listing of what this organization is or who they are. There is a list of officers on their 990 form, but no information about who they are.
World Happiness Report http://worldhappiness.report/ can download data. The website doesn't say who organized/produced this, except at the bottom of a couple of pages it says "The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) was commissioned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 to mobilize scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector to support practical problem solving for sustainable development at local, national, and global scales." However, Columbia's Earth Institute seems to be involved: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/16/world-happiness-report-2016-launched/
How's Life? 2015, Measuring Well-being http://www.oecd.org/std/how-s-life-23089679.htm How’s Life? describes the essential ingredients that shape people’s well-being in OECD and partner countries.
Misc data
Democide http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ murder by governments. I'm very sorry to say the web site says this "Professor Rummel passed away on March 2, 2014. His "Powerkills" website will be maintained by the University of Hawaii Political Science Department."
Axel Dreher has an index of globalization, and another on corruption http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch/
The CSGR Globalisation Index http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/csgr/index "measures the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation for countries on an annual basis over the period 1982 to 2004, and combines these into an overall globalisation index, or score."
Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/ An International website featuring worldwide up to date Internet Usage Statistics and Population Data for over 233 countries and world regions. Their world table http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm shows world data, and they have more detailed data by region.
International Telecommunications Union has a statistics page http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx This is a UN organization.
Cline Center for Democracy http://www.clinecenter.illinois.edu/data/ has a number of data sets that are publicly available.
Societal Infrastructure and Development (SID) Datasets - religious composition, educational attainment, etc.
The Social Political and Economic Event Database Project Datasets - (civil unrest, property rights, electoral processes, etc.
Global Innovation Index http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/ something about the national economy that allows for innovative activities. The about page (actually the contact us page) says this is "co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, an agency of the United Nations)"
International Energy Agency statistics http://www.iea.org/statistics/ Some of their publications are free, like the Key World Energy Statistics http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/key-world-energy-statistics.html In pdf format, but with some work, you can get it into tables.
Relief Web http://reliefweb.int/countries list of disasters, crises
Sites that list other data sites
BLS link to other official data sites http://www.bls.gov/bls/other.htm
UN links to other official data sites http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/inter-natlinks/sd_natstat.htm
Official Statistics of the world http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/
Key Starting Points for Statistics http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm Data on all sorts of topics. Some are free but many are not. But this lists so many varies sources its worth looking at.
Guide to freely available international data resources http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/other-providers/international.aspx Their website says their home office is at the University of Essex.
This Open Directory page http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Government/Multilateral/Regional/ also lists various regional organizations, many of which have data.
Data Portal Tools
CKAN http://ckan.org/ an open-source data portal platform. The website says "CKAN is a powerful data management system that makes data accessible – by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data. CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organizations) wanting to make their data open and available."
Open Data Catalogs http://census.okfn.org/ from the Open Knowledge Foundation. "The open data census assesses the state of open data around the world. This site hosts the census and presents the results along with other key facts about the state of open data and especially open government data around the world."
Data repositories
Data Hub http://datahub.io/ The site says "Give your data a home"
Open Data info
European Union's Open data: An engine for innovation, growth and transparent governance http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0882:FIN:EN:PDF
Whitehouse has a Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf
Misc
NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data https://nsd.no NSD is a national archive and center for research data.
Data from the US Government
Generally data from the US Government are free for anyone to use without the need for permission. I checked these sources as of 3/15/2025
We compiled various data sets from US government data http://gsociology.icaap.org/dataupload.html including data from the US Census International Database, the World Factbook and from the USDA ERS data. Almost all of the data from the US government are “not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work” when the data are used in the US. (https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright ). I've been told by people in the Census Bureau that they have not yet asserted copyright claims when the data has been used outside the US.
World Factbook data are public domain. Their copyright page says "The World Factbook is in the public domain and may be used freely by anyone at anytime without seeking permission." https://www.cia.gov/site-policies/
World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ Data include population, GDP, area, coastline, revenues, expenditure, inequality index, ethnic distributions, phone lines, % land cultivated, % of economy in industry, birthrate, death rate, infant mortality rate, and more.
To get to downloadable data, go to References, and then Explore Guide to Country Profiles. Some of the variables have downloadable data sets.
USDA's ERS data sets https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ has this
- The International Macroeconomic Data Set http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-macroeconomic-data-set.aspx provides data from 1969 through 2030 for real (adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product (GDP), population, real exchange rates, and other variables for the 190 countries and 34 regions that are most important for U.S. agricultural trade.
UC Census Bureau https://www.census.gov has data about population, over time and current, in the International Data Base (IDB)
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/international-programs.html from the US Census Bureau, "The International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world."
Energy Information Administration https://www.eia.gov Click on sources and uses, Then I think you can click on any other energy types, and get data.
The US Department of State.
Religious freedom https://www.state.gov/international-religious-freedom-reports/
Human rights reports https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/
I'm writing this as of 10/0/2020. Some years ago these were descriptions of rights and freedom, and I had translated them to data sets. I haven't looked in a couple of years, so I don't know exactly what's there now.
The Department of State also has this: International Narcotics Control Strategy Report https://www.state.gov/international-narcotics-control-strategy-reports/
I'm writing this as of 10/9/2020. Some years ago, these reports had comparative tables that "identifies the broad range of actions that jurisdictions have, or have not, taken to combat money laundering." I haven't looked at these reports in several years, so I'm not sure what's on them now.
National Center for Educational Statistics, international activities program https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/ has .tables and data.
NSF also has some international data https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/showpub.cfm?TopID=6&SubID=8 on various topics
International trade https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/data/index.html has data of countries trade with the US.