Concerns Rise Over Government Data Accessibility Amid Policy Shifts
Recent executive actions have sparked debate regarding public access to crucial government data, particularly concerning climate change, environmental protection, energy, and public health. These directives have led to alterations in the language used on government websites and raised concerns about transparency.
Removal of Data Resources
Over the past two months, a substantial volume of digital resources, totaling hundreds of terabytes, containing data analysis, has been removed from government web portals. There are apprehensions that further data may be deleted. While the foundational datasets often remain, the user-friendly interfaces and tools that enabled public and researcher access have been eliminated.
Volunteer Efforts to Preserve Public Information
In response, a growing network of volunteers is actively engaged in collecting and archiving government data. These individuals are also working to reconstruct the digital tools necessary for public access to this vital information.
Public Environmental Data Partners Initiative
The volunteer initiative, known as Public Environmental Data Partners, has successfully recovered over 100 datasets previously removed from government sites. They are currently focused on preserving an expanding list of approximately 300 additional datasets.
Echoes of Past Data Preservation Efforts
This situation mirrors events from 2017, during the initial Trump administration, when volunteers undertook similar data downloading efforts. Concerns then centered on potential data loss under a presidency that questioned the validity of climate change.
While minimal federal information vanished during that earlier period, the current situation is perceived as different, prompting a more robust and urgent response.
Expert Perspectives on Data Resilience
Gretchen Gehrke, an environmental scientist and a founder of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), established in 2017 for federal data conservation, commented, “We should not be in a situation where an administration can simply dismantle government websites at will. We lack preparedness for maintaining resilient public information in the digital age, which is a critical need.”
Although legislative mandates often protect raw data collected by agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the digital tools that facilitate public data interaction lack similar safeguards.
Jessie Mahr, Technology Director at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, a data partnership member, stated, “This appears to be a deliberate effort to restrict public access. Ultimately, these tools were funded by American taxpayers.”
Targeted Data Tools: CEJST and EJScreen
The Public Environmental Data Partners coalition reports frequent requests for two specific data tools: the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) and the Environmental Justice Screening Tool (EJScreen).
CEJST, developed under a Biden administration initiative to channel 40 percent of federal climate and infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities, was deactivated in January. EJScreen, an Obama-era tool previously accessible via the EPA, was removed in early February.
Impact on Environmental Justice Initiatives
Dr. Gehrke noted, “A primary action across the executive branch was the removal of references to equity and environmental justice, including the deletion of relevant tools from all agencies. This significantly hinders the public’s ability to identify and address structural racism and its disproportionate effects on communities of color.”
Shifting Definitions of Environmental Justice
Contrasting with the EPA’s definition of environmental justice a decade ago – “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income” – the current EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, recently characterized environmental justice as “forced discrimination.”
Nonprofits relied on CEJST and EJScreen for federal grant applications related to environmental justice and climate initiatives. However, the EPA recently closed its environmental justice offices, ending three decades of efforts to mitigate environmental burdens in vulnerable communities. Furthermore, hundreds of previously approved grants for community improvement projects have been canceled.
Harriet Festing, Executive Director of the Anthropocene Alliance, a nonprofit, emphasized, “Problem articulation is crucial for problem-solving. These data tools were vital for defining the problem.”
Christina Gosnell, Co-founder and President of Catalyst Cooperative, a member of the data preservation effort, expressed concern about data updates, stating that preserving existing datasets is only a preliminary step, as data relevance diminishes without ongoing collection.
Real-World Consequences: Arbor Day Foundation Grant
Over 100 tribal nations, cities, and nonprofits utilized CEJST to demonstrate the need for urban trees for heat reduction and subsequently applied for funding from the Arbor Day Foundation. The Foundation, recipient of a $75 million Inflation Reduction Act grant, was set to plant over 250,000 trees before its grant was terminated in February.
Technical Challenges of Data Tool Recreation
The complexity of recreating data tools varies based on data creation and maintenance practices. CEJST, being “open source,” facilitated rapid reconstruction by three individuals within 24 hours, according to Ms. Mahr, due to publicly accessible raw data and supporting information.
Conversely, EJScreen, lacking open-source architecture, presented greater challenges. Dr. Gehrke explained, “We advocated for EJScreen to be open source in the final weeks of the Biden administration, resulting in the release of substantial code and documentation.”
Recreating EJScreen to near-original functionality involved at least seven individuals over three weeks and is still undergoing refinement. This process is likened to reconstructing a recipe from a list of ingredients without instructions, requiring software engineers to recreate functionality through trial and error.
Focus on Large-Scale Climate Data Preservation
The volunteer coalition is now addressing even more intricate datasets, including climate data from NOAA, which manages petabytes of weather observations and climate models.
Dr. Gehrke highlighted the immense scale: “The sheer volume of data is often underestimated. Storage costs alone can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly, excluding access expenses.” Prioritization discussions with NOAA personnel are underway to identify the most critical and vulnerable data for immediate preservation.
Current Data Storage and Future Data Access
Currently, collected data is largely stored in cloud-based systems with global server backups, utilizing pro bono agreements to mitigate storage costs.
Certain datasets, such as statistics from the Energy Information Administration, remain untouched. Zane Selvans, another Catalyst Cooperative co-founder, noted their eight-year effort to aggregate U.S. energy system data into open-source tools, aiming to improve accessibility to technically available but user-unfriendly federal data.
Mr. Selvans concluded, “So far, we’ve been fortunate. Environmental justice advocates have faced greater challenges.”