Overview
- An independent tracker run by data experts reports at least 28 federal datasets have been deleted and 338 others altered across more than 60 agencies.
- About 40 percent of the flagged changes involve health collections, with multiple CDC surveys removing gender-identity questions including the National HIV Surveillance System and the National Violent Death Reporting System.
- At least four health surveillance systems have stopped receiving updates, notably SAMHSA’s Drug Abuse Warning Network, reducing near-real-time monitoring of overdoses and emerging health threats.
- Federal agencies are not required to notify the public when they end or change data collections, so dataindex.us compiled its tracker from crowdsourced tips, agency notices and monitoring to fill a transparency gap.
- The removals and changes—spanning wage, education, environment and law-enforcement datasets—will make it harder for clinicians, local health officials and policymakers to spot trends, set policy and target aid, and the tracker’s authors say the tally likely undercounts the full scope.