Supporting the Identification, Monitoring and Preservation of Government Data Resources: Findings from DataLumos Outreach Efforts

This report documents the findings of “Identification, Monitoring, and Preservation of Government Data Resources”, an 18-month project involving outreach to government data producers, users, and intermediaries. Through this project, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) sought to identify stakeholders’ most-used government datasets that they perceive to be potentially less accessible in the future, among other goals. Interviews and less formal interactions with data advocates and intermediaries, government data producers, and a variety of data users provided insights into the use of government data and perceptions of these data’s future accessibility. The most important source of data to these stakeholders is the Census Bureau, and several of its products were identified as being critical to stakeholders’ work. Data from other major statistical agencies, non-statistical federal agencies, and state and local data sources were also cited. The federal government data most used by stakeholders—and specifically the data of greatest importance to AECF-funded work—are perceived as accessible for future use. All of the federal datasets that stakeholders perceived to be potentially at risk were assessed and added to the DataLumos archive. A noteworthy finding from these interactions is that data created or collected by KIDS COUNT grantees, National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) participants, and other data intermediaries may not have a long-term data archiving or sharing plan. The analysts at these organizations spend significant effort gathering, aggregating, and analyzing data for their products, but they generally have no mechanism to archive or share these data. Given the investment in this work and the potential value of these data to community organizations, researchers, and even local and regional government agencies, there is a real opportunity for data intermediaries to store and share these data in a secure manner for the long term. Recommendations based on the project’s findings can be grouped into two major categories: advocacy and data sharing. Data users, intermediaries, and funders should continue to advocate that the Census Bureau and other principal statistical agencies provide access to the data products needed to successfully complete their work. Advocacy is also needed at the state and local levels, with the goals of targeting the creation of transparency laws and sunshine clauses, budget line items for data sharing, and infrastructural investments like open data portals and data application programming interfaces (APIs). Beyond traditional advocacy work, sustained and increased collaboration between government data producers and data users, intermediaries, and advocates is needed. As for data sharing, we recommend that data creators and intermediaries like KIDS COUNT grantees and NNIP partners work with data repositories like ICPSR to make their data available to others now and in the future. The archiving of these data would require both the infrastructure of a secure data repository as well as specialized curation and technical assistance related to sharing these types of data. The creation of an archive for data intermediaries’ data would extend the value of intermediaries’ important work, creating new resources for community members, institutions, and researchers.Annie E. Casey Foundationhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148837/1/Supporting the Identification, Monitoring and Preservation of Government Data Resources.pdfDescription of Supporting the Identification, Monitoring and Preservation of Government Data Resources.pdf : Repor