[Naseem S. Miller at the Journalist's Resource]

A massive, last-minute data preservation effort was undertaken this week as important federal datasets were taken offline:

"The new Trump administration has at least temporality halted most communications from the Department of Health and Human Services and has begun taking down government websites, including many pages that include DEI initiatives. CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey site, which monitors health behaviors of high-school students, including sexual behavior, mental health and tobacco use, is no longer available."

This is another reason why the Internet Archive is vitally important infrastructure: websites and datasets were saved, among other places, to the Wayback Machine. Teams including at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health raced to capture the data before it went dark.

These datasets include important information about health (including vaccine information); gender; climate; mortality. They enable reporting and allow us to have a clearer picture of how well our democracy is functioning. At least for now, they're now historical datasets: it's not clear that any further data will be published. Researchers, journalists, medical professionals and more will need to look elsewhere for important information that helps them do their jobs and keep us safe.

#Democracy

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