Policy experts at every level of government require solid facts and data to come to the best decisions for their constituencies. However, especially as the second Trump Administration took over executive agencies in 2025, the data world has faced unprecedented new challenges. These include funding cuts that limit agencies' ability to gather and maintain data, frequent leadership changes that disrupt continuity, increased constraints on accountability and oversight, and disruptions in key statistical divisions. The combination of these challenges has made it significantly harder for policy professionals to rely on consistent, high-quality data.
Some of these issues were explored recently in an illuminating webinar which is part of the Democracy and Public Service Initiative, a partnership between the National Academy of Public Administration and the Bridge Alliance. The panel was moderated by Democracy and Public Service Initiative Fellow Joel Gurin, President and Founder of Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE). “It is a fraught issue and one where we need to seek a lot of creative solutions,” Gurin said.
Beth Jarosz, Vice President of the Association of Public Data Users, observed that the field faced significant challenges even prior to 2025, but conditions have deteriorated markedly in the past two years. Jarosz stated, “We went from slowly eroding budgets and not being able to modernize to wholesale disruption of entire statistical divisions like the National Center for Education Statistics, the removal of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, major cuts in agency staffing, and increasing rules that constrain the accountability and oversight of those agencies.”
A pollster by training, Chris Jackson, SSRS Civil Society Research Lead, referenced surveys his group has conducted with the “data user community,” including businesses, academics, local governments, and nonprofits. He said 93 percent of those surveyed noted they were impacted in some fashion. It ranged from “delayed programs they were working on because the data wasn’t accessible, or canceling of programs because the data wasn’t available.
Francesa Perucci, Director of Policy and Partnership at Open Data Watch, is an expert in international data research and “citizen data,” the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research, where everyday volunteers collect, analyze, or report data. She noted that citizen data is one potential solution to a data crisis. “Citizen data responds to the erosion of trust in data. You provide agency to citizens, so you engage them. You get better representation and inclusion, stronger relevance, and overall fill the data gaps,” Perucci said.
Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder of GovLab, noted that while the world may be enjoying an “AI Summer,” we’re also experiencing a “data winter.” “We’re seeing a decline of trust but also accessibility,” he said. But Verhulst, an expert in “nontraditional data,” also noted that we’re experiencing an explosion in the sheer volume of data available as the world converts to a digital age. “How do we reuse this massive amount of data that has resulted from digital instrumentation and transactions for public interest purposes and complementing official statistics?” Verhulst said.
You can watch the entire webinar recording here:
Bradford Fitch is a Senior Advisor to the Bridge Alliance, former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, and author of “Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."
