CTData Urges Congressional Action to Preserve Federal Data

The statewide nonprofit organization CTData is calling for the restoration of publicly accessible data at the federal level, following actions taken and proposed by the new administration in Washington that is eliminating data or public access to data that had long been publicly accessible.

“These datasets are crucial for investment and planning decisions across Connecticut's private, public, and nonprofit sectors,” CTData officials point out, and they’re urging the state’s Congressional delegation to take action aimed at preserving federal data. 

“The impact to Connecticut constituents is tangible and immediate,” the correspondence points out. “Communities have lost access to crucial information that addresses pressing issues such as teen mental health, bullying, and violence prevention. By removing this taxpayer-funded data from the public domain, the administration has undermined both the mission of the federal statistical system and the public's right to access resources they funded and rely upon.”

The correspondence notes that “the current federal administration has been removing critical datasets from federal government websites, severely restricting public access to essential information collected by the CDC, Census Bureau, and other agencies. This action has blocked access to both historical and current data about our nation's population and health.”

In Connecticut, CTData provides data and data support so that nonprofits, state agencies, businesses, and the public can make decisions and work toward equity – all informed by data.

Explaining that CTData is ‘very concerned” about policies emanating from Washington, CTData explained that “Public data informs investment and planning decisions by Connecticut constituents in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Further, many of these datasets are the only source of information pertaining to our population.”

As an example, CTData observes that “The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System is the only source for understanding teen bullying and suicide ideation.”

Additionally, “This removal of taxpayer-funded information violates the foundational principle that public data should serve the public good. More troubling, it sets a concerning precedent: any administration could restrict access to public data at any point for any reason.”

In urging action by the Connecticut Congressional delegation, the letter states that “On behalf of all the public data users in Connecticut, CTData urges the immediate restoration of public data assets.”

In a recent newsletter, CTData officials explained that “Last month, many federal datasets from CDC, Census Bureau and other agencies were removed from federal websites, including data documentation. During the outage, CTData was able to access the American Community Survey (ACS) API and began writing scripts to download over 1,000 ACS tables. This effort aims to archive Connecticut's ACS data across geographic levels (counties, planning regions, towns and certain census tracts) and preserve documentation to safeguard against future access disruptions.”