Web of Biological Data Act of 2026

Key Points

• The bill creates a centralized online platform called the Web of Biological Data, run by a national laboratory through the Department of Energy. It would bring together biological datasets from across the federal government into one searchable system designed to help researchers use AI and advanced computing to study biology, diseases, and medicine.
• The platform must serve as a single point of entry for researchers to find federally funded biological data, with built-in quality metrics, metadata standards, and formats specifically designed for training AI models.
• The bill includes strong cybersecurity requirements, with tiered access controls and biannual independent security assessments. It specifically restricts data sharing with adversarial countries and nations that do not participate in reciprocal data sharing.
• Congress would authorize $500 million total over five years: $310 million for the initial build-out (Phase I) and $30 million for research and development in the first three years, then $80 million per year for two more years to expand the system to all U.S. researchers in Phase II.
• An advisory board of 12 members from industry, academia, national labs, and federal agencies would oversee the project. The bill also requires collaboration with NIST, the National Library of Medicine, the National AI Research Resource, and biosecurity experts.
• The bill explicitly protects existing privacy, informed consent, and human-subjects protections. Nothing in the law would override current rules about how personal biological data can be used or shared.

Votes

No votes have been recorded for this legislation yet.

News

No related news coverage found for this legislation yet.