Data About America’s Communities Are In Jeopardy, and Lives May Hang in the Balance

Over the years, I’ve worked with counties across California focused on combating drug overdose in their communities. My goal is to help local organizations leverage data to assess the impact of fentanyl and other opioids while communicating these findings to community leaders who can take action. In short, the aim is to use these data to save lives.

However, there is one group with which I’ve worked and written about before for Nightingale—the Yurok Tribe in far Northern California—where there is no well of data from which they can draw. For many reasons, overdose data are not available for them to understand the deep impact of overdose on Native American tribal members. I remember Yurok Tribe members telling me that they were flying blind with no access to useful data and that they often don’t know about an overdose until one of their tribe members dies from it, when it’s obviously too late to provide supportive and life-saving services.

I fear we may be entering an era when many more communities across California and the country will be flying blind without access to data–and on a range of issues, not just the devastating impact of overdose. Among the swirl of changes taking place within the federal government these last few months, you may not have noticed that the availability of meaningful, community-level data is under serious threat. As staff across U.S. data-collecting agencies are let go (and with it, institutional knowledge is lost); budgets for data work shrink; and federal data advisory boards are disbanded, the capacity for the federal government to collect data, conduct surveys, and publish community-level findings could greatly diminish.

We won’t notice these impacts immediately. After all, the Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with other federal agencies often take a few years to publish community-level data on poverty, crowded housing, nutrition, smoking, domestic violence, and suicide prevention, among many other topics. One person with deep experience managing federal data described to me recent developments with the U.S. data infrastructure as a slow rot, as if termites are, bit by bit, eating away at the foundation of federal data. So it may be years before we truly see the extent of this damage, and by then, it won’t be easy to simply reinforce the foundation with minor repairs.

Few would likely argue with the concept that we need detailed data—including from federal data systems—for the U.S. to compete effectively in a worldwide marketplace where companies, and countries, increasingly rely on data to get ahead. From the perspective of global competitiveness, deconstructing our federal data systems seems short-sighted. After all, to compete globally, we need current and reliable data, better breakdowns, and a greater capacity to interpret, visualize, and communicate meaningful findings.

But that’s the world stage. And for those of us in the visualization community, we soon may have less social good data to visualize, and innovation with public sector visualization could slow. Why, however, are data important to communities across America? There are countless ways in which individuals harness these data to save lives, build safer communities, and improve local well being:

Schools use data on reading and math proficiency, for example, to improve curriculum for our children
Local hospitals and county health departments examine government data about service delivery and health care conditions impacting the community, in order to improve medical care and provide preventative services
Adult kids seek Medicare data on the quality of nearby nursing homes for aging parents
Realtors increasingly share public data with clients about crime and the quality of life in neighborhoods to help people make informed decisions about where to buy a home
Many of us consult the local weather forecast each day—the federal government is a key source for this information, especially for tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, and other weather emergencies
And, as noted above, data are used by coalitions to help communities save lives by addressing the threat of overdose

These data are not bound by political lines. They benefit Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. People of all political persuasions can, and do, make use of the treasure trove of data that the U.S. government publishes, often thanks to data translators that participate in the Data Visualization Society.

Our local elected officials—county supervisors, the school board, town council members—rely on these data, too, for good governance and effective policymaking. And, of course, access to quality data helps us evaluate our politicians’ policy choices and keep them honest.

In short, these data are vital to help communities thrive, and lives hang in the balance with decisions we make using these data. These data are not just numbers. They represent each of us and the communities in which we live, and we have every right to the high quality, detailed data for which we pay as taxpayers.

Actions you can take

So, what can you do as someone focused on data visualization about the threats to federal data?

Be aware of the slow rot that we’re beginning to see in our federal data infrastructure.

Use the data we have now while encouraging your community leaders to do the same. Maybe such usage will make it harder to take away these valuable resources. There are an array of data tools that leverage what’s available now from federal sources to provide summaries of how your community is faring on wide-ranging topics (I maintain a listing of roughly 100 such data websites).

Join efforts to do something. National groups taking a lead role include the Association of Public Data Users, the Data Rescue Project, and the newly launched Federal Data Forum, sponsored by the Population Reference Bureau. For anyone in California who’s concerned, there’s a group of us now meeting to address the threats to federal data on our state’s communities, so you can join us. And other states could be, and maybe are, taking similar action.

And let politicians on both sides of the aisle know that federal data are under threat in ways that harm all of us and could have lasting negative impacts for the communities our children and grandchildren will inherit.

Andy Krackov

Hillcrest Advisory | Website

Andy Krackov runs a consultancy, Hillcrest Advisory, to help social sector organizations in California and elsewhere communicate and tell stories with data. A decade ago, when he was a program officer at the California Health Care Foundation, he worked closely with government agencies in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to open up public access to their data.