Public data is one of our most important resources
America's data infrastructure is outdated. We’re asking Congress to fix that and we need you — the voters — to show them it matters.
First ask
Use data to legislate. Make data a standard part of policymaking. Use it to define problems, compare options, allocate resources, and measure outcomes.
Second ask
Fix the data when it falls short. When data is too slow, fragmented, or inaccessible, it’s a failure of public infrastructure. Decision-making suffers. So does public trust.
Read and sign the open letter with Steve Ballmer
A Mandate for 21st-Century Government Data
To the Members of the United States Congress,
We, the undersigned voters, are writing with a simple request: govern with data, and make the data better when it falls short.
Government data is about the American people, provided by the American people, and paid for with their tax dollars. So, we expect you to use it when making decisions on behalf of millions of Americans and deciding how to allocate trillions of taxpayer dollars. Those decisions should be grounded in data. Put another way, they should be grounded in facts.
Leaders of every modern business count on timely, reliable data to make decisions, allocate resources, and evaluate outcomes. Congress should be no different.
Using data is not just about better policymaking. It is about trust. When you use clear, publicly available data, voters can understand why decisions were made, track whether they worked, and evaluate the results.
We also ask you to fulfill your duties as stewards of the data itself.
Years of underinvestment has led America’s data system — considered the gold standard of the world — to degrade. Federal data is frequently outdated, released too slowly to inform real-time decisions, and lacks local detail needed to understand what is happening in states and communities. It is fragmented across agencies, difficult to access, and often requires specialized expertise to interpret. In some cases, critical data is incomplete or inconsistent, limiting its usefulness for both lawmakers and the public.
When data grows obsolete, decision-making suffers. So does public trust.
This is not an abstract problem — it is a core function of government. The same way Congress funds roads, defense, and public safety, you must also fund and oversee the nation’s data infrastructure. It’s 2026. We need leaders to bring government data into the 21st Century.
We are asking you to do two things:
First: Use data to legislate. Make data a standard part of policymaking. Use it to define problems, compare options, allocate resources, and measure outcomes. Make the data behind major decisions clear and accessible so that voters can understand your work.
Second: Fix the data when it falls short. When data is too slow, too fragmented, too inaccessible, or lacks local relevance, it is a critical problem to solve, not just for you, but for your constituents as well. We ask you to use your authority to modernize federal data systems, improve timeliness and quality, increase ease of access, and ensure data is usable for both policymakers and the public.
A functioning democracy requires informed decisions and an informed public. Both depend on better use of data – and better data itself. 
We know what it takes
Congress already trusts the data:
We’ve worked with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for over a decade. This petition gives their constituents a way to say that they care about public data, too.
We know where the data breaks down:
We work with hundreds of federal, state, and local databases every day. We’ve seen the gaps firsthand, both in accessing and using incomplete or inconsistent information.
We’re already doing the work:
We regularly partner with Congress to improve data quality, and we’re working with broad coalitions to make government data easier to access for all Americans.
