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Washington Post Letter to the Editor: U.S. data needs an overhaul

Building data infrastructure that survives political transitions - Nick Hart's letter published in The Washington Post on the future of trusted government data

	28 Dec 2025
	Blogs

U.S. data needs an overhaul

Letter to the Editor, The Washington Post
Published December 28, 2025

The Dec. 22 news article "U.S. role as trusted information source is under threat" highlighted real disruptions to federal data systems from the past year but missed some important context: America is using more data for decision-making than ever before.

Artificial intelligence applications increasingly draw from quality government data sets, businesses make billion-dollar decisions using federal statistics, and federal payment integrity reforms are preventing fraud through modern data sharing.

I worked at the White House under George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and I also staffed the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. Each administration — including the current one — made positive strides in improving how the U.S. accesses and uses data. We are continuing to learn how to better adapt evidence-based policymaking across our society.

The real challenge is balance, realism and prioritization. Resources are limited, not all data are equal, and we need meaningful engagement with stakeholders, data users and the American people to guide decisions about what to collect and archive.

The solution is building data infrastructure that survives political transitions. The U.S. should enforce the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act requirements with congressional oversight to preserve and strengthen the government's capacity to use the best available information for making policies and decisions. It should also support chief data officers executing the OPEN Government Data Act, which makes federal data publicly available. And the U.S. should create additional transparent systems showing what data the government collects and how it's used.

Our democracy depends on trusted data. Trust requires institutional infrastructure with the independence, resources and resilience to serve America through political transitions.

Nick Hart
President and CEO, Data Foundation

Read the full letter in The Washington Post →

This letter to the editor was originally published in the Washington Post on December 28, 2025.