Did YOU know the USA has a Federal Data Strategy? Or that it’s part of National US Plan for Open Government? This President and White House should have told you, instead of failing to engage Americans.

I participated in another one of the Data Foundation’s public forums on the Data Strategy. I was less generous than previous speakers:

I talked about how this administration’s record of lies, data deletion, censorship, & attacks on science has utterly eviscerated the mission defined in the Federal Data Strategy.

Public trust in open data and government depends on good governance. But this White House has not only failed to use the immense capacity of the federal government to engage the American public about this strategy or co-create a new National Government plan: it has censored data and scientists, cast doubt on government statistics, and robbed us of shared facts necessary for collective action to address societal challenges, from the pandemic to systemic injustice to climate change.

In 2021, our federal government can and must do better to be the responsible stewards of public information that this strategy aspirationally describes.