Article by Denice Ross & Melanie Klein: “From the small businesses relying on census figures to a cancer patient who survives because they found the right clinical trial, federal data are the essential, invisible infrastructure of modern American life. The data enterprise of the United States government is world-class. But it’s not perfect, and American communities have long needed data that are more detailed, timely, and relevant while also protecting privacy and security.
Unfortunately, federal data are held together with a patchwork of outdated and brittle policies that leave our data vulnerable, and currently, federal data programs face a perfect storm of funding cuts, personnel departures, and the erosion of institutional knowledge.
The solution is not to simply rebuild the data infrastructure as it was. To build a more healthy, safe, prosperous and equitable society, we need a new approach to data. That means catalyzing the field of data policy.
More robust public data policies will provide communities with better warnings for extreme weather, protect people from illness and disease, give businesses market insights they need to be profitable, and enable innovations like autonomous (“captainless”) shipping and AI-informed emergency response. Such policies might include more robust engagement to enhance the utility of federal data, from strengthening funding and talent pipelines to sustain and improve the federal data ecosystem, to modernized privacy and data sharing to improve public trust and deliver better services to the American people…(More)”.
