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🧐 What are Data Rescues
January 2025 marks a return to uncertainty with not only the presidential transition, but also economic, political, and social tensions at an all time high. With all these dangers and threats, one might overlook the crucial yet ever changing threats to at-risk government data. But these threats to information about our government's spending, investments, research, education, social support and services, as well as presidential priorities are not new.
Let’s think back to 2017 when hundreds of people gathered together in small and big rooms in libraries or classrooms to sit in front of brightly lit computer screens rushing against the political clock. What caused this urgency, you ask? The answer rests on both an ongoing hazard to data integrity in the form of neglectful data retention practices as well as a then new danger in the form of unruly data destruction practices of the first Trump presidency. After a polarizing 2016 election campaign cycle full of abundant information, misinformation, and disinformation, the incoming administration finally had control over countless government data repositories, information resources, and websites.
On January 20th, 2017 the Trump administration began to shut down websites, terminate funding for environmental research, and threatened agencies and government workers. For example the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website in 2017 received notification that their publicly available data would be removed come the new Trump administration although later on the administration did back away from that plan prior to taking control of the presidency. That same year EPA staffers were put under a gag order from the Trump administration and were not allowed to talk to the media. These acts of obstruction and destruction confirmed what voters recalled as targeted threats against environmental science and Climate Change government programs.
Eight years ago this month, many people felt immense despair, fear, and uncertainty over their public government records, many of which aided in countless scientific experiments, outreach and awareness, and education initiatives aimed at restoring and protecting our natural environments. Luckily, for some records and many people across the world, that same despair and panic turned into action. Across the country, people designed, held, and volunteered their skills and time at data preservation events with many titled “Data Rescues.” These in-person gatherings brought together information professionals, digital archivists, librarians, students, programmers, scientists, community organizers, and volunteers across age, professions, and backgrounds. Modeled after crowdsourcing data editing events like "wiki edit-a-thon" and collaborating with efforts like “Endangered Data Week,” these civic engagement events convened concerned individuals resulting in more supportive communities and collective change.
Through multiple hour-long sessions held at universities, public libraries, and other public spaces, volunteers participated in web crawling, metadata creation, data backup and uploads, and identification of vulnerable at-risk federal, state, and local data and resources. While destruction of government records remains illegal both at the federal and state level, the first Trump administration was frequently noted for intentional destruction of presidential records as well as failure to follow National Archives and Records Administration data retention policies. With the upcoming second term of the Trump administration and repeated threats to many of the same agencies as before, as described in Project 2025 documents and external organizational analysis, the urgency to preserve returns.
Given these frightening scenarios and risk factors, the Seattle community can work together to triage a potentially disastrous scenario for the United States, the public, and our publicly funded government data. Others like the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), Silencing Science Tracker, DataLumos, and the End-of-Term Project are continuing the work from 2016 with ongoing monitoring, collecting, describing, and preserving at-risk data. Even more recently state lawmakers from Massachusetts, Hawai’i and North Carolina have introduced legislation the “Public Archives Resiliency Act” to safeguard vulnerable government data.
Data Rescue volunteers will participate in the process of preserving online public government data, understanding which types of data are most at risk, and begin the actions of rapid response data preservation. Local efforts aim to bring attention to both ongoing and upcoming threats to vital information that will be necessary for continued efforts at restoring and repairing environmental damages and social tension, the work cannot end there. Even after the inauguration and DataRescue events, Data Rescue coordinators will facilitate skill building and commitment to data preservation while opening up dialogue with others in the Seattle and Washington community on how our city and state can advocate for data integrity and environmental protection.
UPDATE: We've added an Updates page with more information on the state of federal data through the first months of 2025.