How to save the future of federal data
The Trump administration has stunned everyone who relies on federal data — a huge group that includes policymakers, researchers, business leaders, journalists, physicians and government officials themselves.
Following the president’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change and "gender ideology," federal agencies made thousands of web pages on dozens of websites disappear overnight, deleting large numbers of datasets in the process.
Some websites are starting to reappear, scrubbed of the banned terms and text. But we don’t know how the actual datasets on these and other government sites may be hidden, altered or deleted.
These concerns have activated the open data community, the informal network of techies, policy wonks and advocates who promote the use of open public data for public good. My nonprofit is tracking dozens of organizations that are working to download and archive essential datasets.
For example, the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab has copied more than 300,000 federal datasets, and the Internet Archive’s 20-year-old Wayback Machine has proven its value in saving federal data and websites. There’s a good chance we will still be able to access most if not all public federal data that was available before Inauguration Day, including data on social issues from climate and environmental justice to health care and housing.
But today’s data will not help us solve tomorrow’s problems — and that’s where the biggest challenge lies. Trump’s executive orders on diversity, climate, gender and perhaps more to come could lead to major changes in how future data is collected and published. In addition, the administration could discontinue or fail to update important tools and maps that present data to the public.
Here are some ways to preserve the country’s essential data and put it to good use.
- Make the business case for detailed, accurate data. Accurate federal data, including demographic data on gender, race and ethnicity, is essential to any business that needs to understand American markets. Business leaders can advocate keeping major data collections like the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey intact.
- Maintain legally required data from agencies at risk. The Trump administration is moving to shutter federal agencies that, among other duties, are required by law to collect important datasets. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau collects data to ensure fair mortgages and fair lending, for example, and the Department of Education collects data on educational attainment nationwide. Whatever happens to these and other agencies, their mandated data collections need to continue. Some organizations may litigate to keep data available, as a physician’s organization did successfully and as an environmental organization representing farmers is doing for climate data.
- Advocate for data budgets. Aside from political issues, some essential data sources, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are chronically underfunded and vulnerable to future budget cuts. Organizations that use their data can advocate for adequate funding to maintain and build these essential resources.
- Monitor changes in data collection. Federal agencies may change or remove variables related to race, ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation when they collect data in the future. Interested organizations can use tools like the Data Foundation’s SAFE-Track platform to monitor these changes, flag them publicly and advocate to reverse them.
- Recreate essential tools and maps. Analytical tools and maps are essential to give meaning to federal data. Anticipating the Trump administration, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative began working months ago to replicate the widely used Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool. When the Trump administration took these down, their partners had the data and code to replicate and repost them within days. Other organizations can identify tools and maps that are likely to disappear, if they haven’t already, and recreate and update them.
- Engage at the state and local level. Academics and other researchers can analyze state government data when federal data is lacking, as Johns Hopkins University did during the COVID pandemic. At the same time, they can help state governments resist political pressure to change their own data collections.
- Enforce the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (the Evidence Act). In 2019, President Trump signed the bipartisan Evidence Act, which requires federal agencies to make their data more open and useful. Recent guidance from the Office of Management and Budget directs agencies to implement the act by engaging with the public and prioritizing data that can have the greatest public benefit. That should include ensuring that federal data is accurate, complete, and detailed enough to support social goals.
The Evidence Act established that the federal data system, with its hundreds of thousands of datasets, is a critical part of our national infrastructure. The many groups and organizations that rely on federal data can hold the White House and Congress accountable to that basic principle and ensure that we maintain the country’s essential data resources.
Joel Gurin is president of the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise, based in Washington, which he founded in 2015.
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