Over the past few months, we’ve seen a disconnect forming between the government and data communities as data resources becomes less of a priority for the new administration. While on the campaign trail, President Trump was the first to admitthat his campaign was not a data-backed machine, in contrast to his opponents. Instead, he successfully won using powerful personal branding. Although unconventional for a modern politician, it worked, and Trump’s win took many in the data-science community by surprise. Now, three months down the road, this disconnect between data and government is growing. “Fake news” accusations make it hard to know what information and numbers are credible—both from the White House andthe media. Additionally, threatsto remove pages of the EPA’s website sent the data-science community scrambling to save years of climate-change data. Looking ahead, many are still wondering how this administration will handle the data-driven programsthat were created over the past eight years.
While the future of data in the government is unclear, it’s imperative that the two communities continue to work together. The projects that have been started and the partnerships between data scientists and the White House have been hugely impactful.
Here are four reasons it is vital they continue to work in tandem:
1) No turning back now. The Obama administration ushered in the first U.S. chief data scientist, opening the floodgates on the use of datain government, and put truly relevant federal data in the hands of the American people for the first time. This is going to be a difficult door to shut, knowing that the data is already out there and people are currently using and benefiting from it. But it is unclear from the existing Project Open Data pages if the current administration plans to keep this information updated, or they plan to deprioritize, allowing it to lapse. It appears that Project Open Data Dashboard, which was used to measure how well federal departments were performing on this initiative, is no longer being updated (as of November 30, 2016).
2) All signs point to success. For many, the merging of government and data has already had a big effect. Locally, towns all over the country have created data-backed projects to help solve issues ranging from identifying off-track studentsto mitigating stormwater runoff. These projects are expanding to the state level, with Ohio governor John Kasich announcinga state-wide initiative to use data-backed resources to address the state’s toughest problems.
