Government data is collected and analyzed by career civil servants who have dedicated their professional lives to producing exceptional data and statistics. In fact, most employees in the executive branch, including those responsible for the data, are governed by the Hatch Act which ensures that government programs are administered in a non-partisan fashion. In addition, government data is funded by you – the American taxpayer – and is overseen by your representatives in Congress. Billions of dollars are invested yearly in this high-quality data with strict oversight, making it some of the best and highest quality data available to the public. And government is incentivized to produce good data because it needs good data itself to make decisions. Agencies like the Federal Reserve make decisions on interest rates after looking at key economic indicators like inflation rates and employment numbers from the Department of Labor. Programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants are given out based on data from the Census Bureau and the Department of Health and Human Services. Congress needs good data to enact legislation on behalf of their constituents. These are just a few of the many examples, but at the end of the day, government needs the data it produces to be accurate in order to function.

There is no perfect way to know if data is being manipulated, but we are always monitoring the datasets we use and will continue to call out any irregularities. For example, we sometimes spot mistakes in government data and call them out (civil servants are humans too, and reporting errors do sometimes happen). We also notice when data is taken out of context and make sure to provide full context. That is why we create products like the State of the Union in Numbers, to give the big picture where it is needed. Finally, we partner with other data organizations to monitor the state of government data – some that look broadly across government, and others that have deep expertise in specific subjects. Data manipulation, should it happen, would not go unnoticed.

Most of the data that USAFacts typically accesses continues to be published and available, although there are certainly instances where data has been removed or reduced. The federal government stopped publishing data on Billion Dollar Disasters in 2025. The annual Food Security Survey was also terminated in 2025. In both cases, USAFacts opposed eliminating these data collections. At the same time, other data has become more accessible. In 2026, the Department of Labor introduced a new tool to visualize union data. The State of Federal Data Products in 2025 brief published by USAFacts and the Partnership for Public Service provides some insight into what has happened to federal data products between 2024 and 2025. We examined 48 data products and how they changed over the year as part of our Federal Data Excellence program, finding that 46 were still active, and 18 had missed or not received any updates.

Given extensive media reporting on the reductions in workforce and structural changes to agencies that produce government data, we hear this question often. The effects of these changes on the data itself are rarely immediate, and we will learn over time about the impacts of these changes, such as whether data releases start being delayed or data stops being produced altogether. One released, however, USAFacts continues to trust the data. Government agencies like the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics all still have very high thresholds for quality for the data they produce even if reductions in force, and we have every reason to believe that the data that is released is still of high quality.

USAFacts unequivocally supports the collection, analysis, and presentation of good government data for the American public. Since it’s inception, USAFacts has worked with government officials and members of Congress – across parties – to build a bipartisan coalition of support for good government data. We have testified before Congress, advised agencies, produced data standards, and provided recommendations for improvement to data. We regularly activate our network to advance improvements to government data and prevent declines in the availability or quality of important datasets, and we respond to any decisions that negatively impact access to public data. This does not mean we categorically fight to keep all data or to retain the status quo – even the most vocal advocates for public data will admit that some data isn't necessary, is duplicative, has become obsolete, or has degraded in quality, and most government data products need improvements. But when data is important to the public, we will advocate for it.

This topic has been in the news a lot recently, but revisions and footnotes are nothing new. Long footnotes and revisions are not something to be alarmed about, rather they are a sign of excellent data. Government data is complicated and relies on inputs from up to 340 million Americans and 90 thousand state and local governments. Professional civil servants take great care to be as transparent as possible about everything they do to make the data useful to the public. Frequently this comes in the form of footnotes and deep explanations. You don’t have to read them, we do it for you. Revisions happen often, especially as the government learns more. Preliminary data is useful to give the country a picture of how things are going, and is frequently released for issues like crime, jobs, and health. But as time goes on and more data becomes available, the government is obligated to update with new information. Initial data is very helpful in the short term, and revised data becomes even more useful for understanding long-term trends in the country. Finally, footnotes are a sign of government transparency. Government does not try to hide limitations of the data, rather they go through great pains to ensure the public has access to everything it needs to decide whether to believe the numbers it produces. Data is often imperfect, but caveats and footnotes are a sign that the agencies are putting their best foot forward in an open, transparent manner.

Supporting and trusting government data does not equate to supporting polices of an administration. USAFacts believes that government data is a professionally created, non-partisan resource for the American public, and therefore we support and use government data produced by every administration from any party. Government data does not always supports the policies of the administration that produces them. For example, economic indicators show the state of the economy, whether good or bad for the President. Administrations do decide in many cases to focus on data collection that illuminates their major policy priorities, and will show new, relevant data as long as it is accurate. USAFacts remains staunchly non-partisan as it has since its founding. We will continue to work across the aisle to advocate for greater access, improvements, and preservation of high quality government data that people need.