The White House recently deleted all of the data on its open data portal, which served as a public clearinghouse for data on everything from federal budgets to climate change initiatives.
This is a red flag, since for eight years, the Obama White House championed the practice of making government data freely available to the public in order to promote transparency and accountability, to serve as a resource for researchers, and to allow innovators to create new tools and services that spur economic activity and solve social problems.
While the Trump administration has not yet signaled that it will oppose open data across the federal government, its silence on the issue suggests that open data may not receive the same level of priority it has in the past. In sharp contrast, President Obama declared a "new era of openness" on his first full day in office and directed federal agencies to be more transparent.
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Unlike Data.gov, the federal government's primary open data portal, the White House open data portal was by no means the most crucial repository of data, primarily consisting of machine-readable versions of White House reports, policy initiatives and budgets. Moreover, most of this data should still be available through an archived version of the portal, though a handful of datasets do seem to still be missing, particularly budgeting data for fiscal year 2012.
It is possible that this is merely a case of poor communication: The new administration may be in the process of updating its website and forgot to alert users of the scheduled downtime.
Unfortunately, this latest action comes on the heels of an earlier decision in February by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to shield government data from public scrutiny by removing data collected by the agency's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
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Instead of simply censoring personally identifiable information when privacy concerns arise, the USDA decided that members of the public should have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to access any of this data a process that can take months.
The private sector will be unable to rely on government data if federal agencies can make arbitrary and capricious decisions about when to publish datasets.
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For example, some sources are reporting that the administration plans to wipe data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to climate change. Reacting to Trump's long history of dismissing climate science and reported plans to reduce the EPA's ability to study climate issues, a large number of civil society groups, civic hackers and concerned scientists have taken to archiving federal climate and environmental data to make it available through a non-government website, fearing that the administration will delete or alter it.
There is no definitive evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the valuable commitments to open data that Obama made during his administration, which require federal agencies to treat their data as open and machine-readable by default. However, the Trump administration has also failed to make any indication that it intends to honor or expand upon these commitments.
In fact, the White House has archived the guidance on open data from the Office of Management and Budget along with the Open Government National Action Plans, which detail the U.S. government's commitments to meet the goals of the multinational Open Government Partnership, which include publishing open data, further indicating that it does not consider these policies as its own.
Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/320511-why-is-federal-government-data-disappearing
Links to all mentioned databases are in Source article!
This is a red flag, since for eight years, the Obama White House championed the practice of making government data freely available to the public in order to promote transparency and accountability, to serve as a resource for researchers, and to allow innovators to create new tools and services that spur economic activity and solve social problems.
While the Trump administration has not yet signaled that it will oppose open data across the federal government, its silence on the issue suggests that open data may not receive the same level of priority it has in the past. In sharp contrast, President Obama declared a "new era of openness" on his first full day in office and directed federal agencies to be more transparent.
......
Unlike Data.gov, the federal government's primary open data portal, the White House open data portal was by no means the most crucial repository of data, primarily consisting of machine-readable versions of White House reports, policy initiatives and budgets. Moreover, most of this data should still be available through an archived version of the portal, though a handful of datasets do seem to still be missing, particularly budgeting data for fiscal year 2012.
It is possible that this is merely a case of poor communication: The new administration may be in the process of updating its website and forgot to alert users of the scheduled downtime.
Unfortunately, this latest action comes on the heels of an earlier decision in February by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to shield government data from public scrutiny by removing data collected by the agency's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
......
Instead of simply censoring personally identifiable information when privacy concerns arise, the USDA decided that members of the public should have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to access any of this data a process that can take months.
The private sector will be unable to rely on government data if federal agencies can make arbitrary and capricious decisions about when to publish datasets.
......
For example, some sources are reporting that the administration plans to wipe data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to climate change. Reacting to Trump's long history of dismissing climate science and reported plans to reduce the EPA's ability to study climate issues, a large number of civil society groups, civic hackers and concerned scientists have taken to archiving federal climate and environmental data to make it available through a non-government website, fearing that the administration will delete or alter it.
There is no definitive evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the valuable commitments to open data that Obama made during his administration, which require federal agencies to treat their data as open and machine-readable by default. However, the Trump administration has also failed to make any indication that it intends to honor or expand upon these commitments.
In fact, the White House has archived the guidance on open data from the Office of Management and Budget along with the Open Government National Action Plans, which detail the U.S. government's commitments to meet the goals of the multinational Open Government Partnership, which include publishing open data, further indicating that it does not consider these policies as its own.
Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/320511-why-is-federal-government-data-disappearing
Links to all mentioned databases are in Source article!
