2025-in-Review: Insights from the Evidence Capacity Pulse Report Series

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Introduction

The Data Foundation has worked with a wide range of policymakers, public sector officials, and industry professionals over the past decade to build and strengthen America’s evidence infrastructure. The start of 2025 saw an administrative transition in the federal government and subsequently a series of rapid restructuring and policy changes, which prompted concern and conflicting claims about federal evidence infrastructure. To promote transparency, clarify the true extent of capacity changes, and assess potential impacts to programs and policies, the Data Foundation began efforts to objectively verify and report claims about ongoing changes in federal data and evidence.

In February 2025, the Data Foundation launched SAFE-Track (Secure Anonymous Federal Evidence, Data and Analysis Tracking) to systematically understand changes affecting federal evidence and data activities. This retrospective report builds upon previous analyses, incorporating information gathered through confidential SAFE-Track submissions, Data Foundation research, and continued engagement with our community to document the evolving federal evidence landscape in 2025.

Our approach recognizes that a cohesive evidence ecosystem requires multiple interconnected components: statistical agencies that produce foundational data, Chief Data Officers who implement data governance and strategy, evaluation professionals who assess program effectiveness, and researchers who analyze policies and outcomes. In 2025, we’ve continued to observe how changes to multiple parts of this ecosystem are increasing and compounding, likely further affecting the government’s ability to provide reliable information for decision-making in the near-term.

This aggregate report compiling findings and insights from our monthly Evidence Capacity Pulse Report series continues our systematic documentation of organizational transitions across the federal evidence infrastructure, building on patterns first identified in March 2025.

The Data Foundation recognizes that, broadly, the organizational changes documented in this report are in support of the administration’s stated objectives of improving government efficiency and fiscal responsibility. These transitions involve complex considerations about balancing operational capacity with administrative streamlining, and we acknowledge that different stakeholders may have varying perspectives on the optimal approaches to reform federal data and evidence infrastructure. Our aim with this report series is simply to document these changes objectively as they unfold.