Under Trump, inconvenient data is being sidelined; Washington Post, May 14, 2017

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post; Under Trump, inconvenient data is being sidelined

"Across the vast breadth of the government, agencies have traditionally provided the public with massive data sets, which can be of great value to companies, researchers and advocacy groups, among others. Three months ago, there were 195,245 public data sets available on www.data.gov, according to Nathan Cortez, the associate dean of research at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, who studies the handling of public data. This week it stood at just under 156,000.

Data experts say the decrease, at least in part, may reflect the consolidation of data sets or the culling of outdated ones, rather than a strategic move to keep information from the public. But the reduction was clearly a conscious decision."

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2017

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency

"If you wanted to know who visited the White House, how much the president’s secretary is paid, or which state has the most federally funded teaching positions, the information was just a few clicks away. With a bit more technical knowledge, you could explore public data sets to analyze the president’s budget, or look for trends in government spending.

No more.

Dozens of data sets disappeared last week from Open.WhiteHouse.gov, a website the Obama administration created to promote government transparency.

Visitors to the website now and find a message saying “check back for new data.” But it isn’t clear when any new data will be posted, and government watchdogs aren’t confident that it will ever happen.

“We are working to open up the new sites,” White House press aide Helen Ferre emailed in response to questions. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the content of the “new sites,” whether they will include visitor logs, why data sets were removed, and when aides will post new information...

The data the Obama administration provided hasn’t been deleted. Rather it’s been preserved by the National Archives in accordance with a law that prohibits federal data from being destroyed. Find it at https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...

The data is no longer in a user-friendly format. Users have to have the technical knowledge to unpack zipfiles and must have software that can handle large files with millions of rows of data."