University of Kwazulu-Natal

Disappearing Federal Data Resources Data Resources Tools Research

Bonisiwe Shabane
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disappearing federal data resources data resources tools research

Beginning in January 2025, many federal datasets, websites, and other previously accessible resources, across agencies, are being taken offline to comply with executive orders. In some cases, press releases or data documentation have been removed; in others, entire datasets have been taken down. Evidence is growing that even datasets that remain accessible on an agency’s website may have scrubbed, corrupted, or otherwise altered information. Learn more about missing, altered or restored federal data: New York Times (02/11/25): Judge Orders C.D.C. to Temporarily Restore Deleted HHS, CDC & FDA Web Pages.

The temporary restraining order was granted in response to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Doctors for America (DFA), a progressive advocacy group representing physicians, and the nonprofit Public Citizen, a consumer... Previously restored pages include the Atlas Tool, used by policymakers to track rates of infectious diseases such as HIV and STIs; pages that explained the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which monitors adolescent health;... Silencing Science Tracker: joint initiative of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, tracking government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research since the November 2016 election Please recommend resources to be added to this guide by emailing libref@eckerd.edu. Thank you to our colleagues from the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries group for their thoughtful collaboration on this guide. After January 20, 2025, federal data, webpages, and other previously accessible sources of government information normally available to researchers and the public began to disappear in order to comply with executive orders.

This is an evolving situation. To learn more about missing or altered federal data: The Journalists Resource is an overview of the current situation from the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School. This guide has been created in response to recent and ongoing removal of federal datasets, websites, and other digital resources. It is a work in progress and will be updated as new archives and repositories are surfaced. Many of the resources linked here have been identified by the Data Rescue Project and LibGuides from other colleges and universities.

If you need assistance using any of the resources linked here, or these resources don't meet your needs, please reach out to your Research & Instruction Librarian. Recent executive orders and federal agency actions have raised questions about the future of publicly available government data, what can and can’t be published, and how the future of government-funded research will play out. So far, this has impacted some federal health data, USDA climate change information, Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) libraries, and more. Various datasets, resources and information have been removed from federal agencies, including the CDC, NIH, and EPA to comply with recent executive orders from the Trump administration that eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs... In large part, the data that has been impacted is public health data related to marginalized groups. Some access to data (specifically data on HHS, CDC, and FDA)that was removed has since been restored after a temporary restraining order.

Even as data is restored is unclear whether that data may have been scrubbed of certain datapoints or whether access to the data will remain in the future. One role researchers can play in protecting their own data is to self-archive their data into open respositories. Davidson College Library Research Guides © YEAR are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Starting on January 20, 2025, many federal websites and datasets have been taken offline to comply with various executive orders. Most notably, information and data from the CDC, EPA, and NIH have disappeared. Much of the targeted data is related to health disparities based on race, gender, and sexuality, factors often considered in health research.

Federal data on education that touches on disparities in outcomes among different groups is also at risk. Some data that remain accessible online may have been scrubbed, corrupted, or otherwise altered. This guide is designed to help the MHC community: 1) understand the current data landscape; 2) locate US federal government data that may have been removed; 3) gain awareness about data advocacy and rescue... This section provides strategies for retrieving missing or altered federal data and for locating archived versions of government websites. Begin by searching data.gov to confirm whether the data is truly unavailable. It's possible that the dataset has been relocated.

2. Use the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: A new presidential administration typically brings significant changes to federal government websites. What is not typical, however, is the pressure faced by executive agencies in the second Trump administration to remove data and take down websites that conflict with the president's political views as outlined in... It has become increasingly common for government data sets that were previously publicly available to be removed. Some of these datasets may be altered and made available again, while others may remain offline indefinitely.

Below is a list of non-governmental resources that have some US government-produced data. Please feel free to contact me if you need any help finding US government information. Since a flurry of executive orders were issued in early 2025, thousands of datasets and webpages have been removed from federal government websites. The removals have focused on content relating to both topics that have been the subject of executive orders (e.g. gender, structural inequality, climate science, and public health) and content on other topics that uses vocabulary common to research on the topics targeted by the orders. This guide provides a workflow for researchers needing access to data that has been removed.

Most US federal government datasets are still available on data.gov, if you have not heard specific reports that a dataset has been removed or moved, begin searching by name or topic on data.gov. If the data is not indexed on Data.gov and you know which government agency produced the information, check their website directly. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine indexes many (but not all) .gov webpages. It works best if you have the exact url for the old page - you may be able to find this from cached google search results, citations, etc. Starting in late January 2025, researchers began noticing that some federal government datasets that used to be publicly accessible are no longer available on government websites. Datasets have disappeared from the websites of the CDC, EPA, NOAA, NIH, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, Food & Drug Administration, and more.

Universities, scholarly organizations, and individuals have worked to rescue access to data. This libguide provides further information about the current situation and ongoing data rescue efforts, along with suggested resources for researchers. This libguide is being continuously updated; if you have suggestions for additional information to include on this library guide, please email the details to libref@pugetsound.edu. If you need assistance locating data, please reach out to any of the Collins liaison librarians. The Government Information Crisis Is Bigger Than You Think It Is blog post by Free Government Information CDC removes gender, equity references in public health material from WaPo

During the second Trump administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took control of the federal government information systems in order to downsize federal agencies. DOGE embedded units from the executive branch of the government, including cabinet departments and various types of independent agencies. It targeted regulatory agencies and units from the legislative branch. It also targeted quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations and organizations outside the federal government. This operation allowed Elon Musk and a network of operatives to facilitate mass layoffs, to terminate contracts, and to slash regulations. Many public records were modified or removed from federal websites and databases.

These actions have fostered reactions by federal workers, civil society, and the public, ranging from protests to lawsuits. DOGE arrived at OPM on Inauguration day.[1] By February, DOGE had tried to dismantle the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,... The Wall Street Journal found that, in February 2025, the units most affected by DOGE contract terminations were: USAID, Health and Human Services (HHS), Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Education (Ed), and...

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