Right after completing the previous post on the HRSA data set I came across this article in the Guardian titled Trump 2.0 has deleted or altered nearly 400 US datasets, endangering public health, education and more. As someone who relies on these releases to find meaningful social, environmental, political and economic trends for the Alleghenies, this is a disturbing development. Looking at the HRSA data set from this year. It states that 28 federal data sets were deleted and another 338 were altered. Trump curbing government public data releases makes it harder to independently investigate meaningful patterns in the area.
The website dataindex.us has been tracking the changes to the publicly available dataset. They state that since Trump retook office revisions and deletions to the datasets occurred in the topics of health (158), education (24), Veterans (20), Immigration (20), and labor (37). One of the ways to curtail these datasets is cutting the staff who compile the data. The above video shows the introduction of the dataindex website.
The top agencies affected by these revisions are the CDC (51), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) (42), Dept. of Education (23), and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (20). Nine data sets were altered or deleted from the HRSA website. The article states that many of these items refer to LGBT issues.
There are 33 variables that comprise the HRSA Unmet Need Score this year. The variables appear the same as in last year’s data set. Likewise, it is also not listed as a modified data set on the dataindex website. We will keep posting on the UNS dataset. We can still learn things from publicly available datasets. However, we cannot learn as many things as before Trump 2.0.