Article by Denice Ross & Chris Dick: “Federal data benefit American lives and livelihoods in ways most people never see, touching every corner of our lives. This includes a farmer pricing a crop, a county planning a hospital, a business siting a warehouse — all of these decisions use federal data. Other data save patients money by identifying generic drugs that can replace more expensive brand names, help airplanes avoid deadly bird strikes, and warn consumers about recalls of dangerous products.
Because these data are mostly invisible, their disappearance is invisible too — that is, until we need the data and they aren’t there anymore.
As federal data policy nerds, the question we get asked all the time is How much data has the current administration terminated?
The answer is that it depends on what we count as “data” AND what counts as a termination. That’s not a dodge – working through those two critical nuances is the substance of this piece.
The answer also depends on what the information will be used for. Ours is a data policy question, so we looked for structured, numerical datasets that have been terminated – meaning there will be no collections of those data in the future. Defining terminations that way lets us ask how agencies consulted with the public about a dataset’s value before ending it, and what its loss means for the federal government’s ability to serve the American people.
The purpose of the Federal Data Terminations Tracker is to be the most policy-relevant, verified accounting of federal data terminations available.
To create this Tracker, the dataindex.us team identified dozens of federal datasets and hundreds of data elements that have been terminated – significantly fewer than other reports, but more tailored to informing future data policies needed to run a modern society. These are data that have long underpinned policymaking, journalism, advocacy and research that improve American lives and livelihoods. These figures will change as terminations continue, collections are merged, and as court orders restore data.
Want more details on why this question about federal data losses is so tricky? Read on. Want to see what data have been terminated? Visit the Federal Data Terminations Tracker at dataindex.us/terminations-tracker…(More)”.
