Federal Data Forum

Origins

The Federal Data Forum was launched on May 12, 2025 by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), a nonpartisan demographic research organization founded in 1929, in partnership with Georgetown University's Massive Data Institute (MDI) — one of only 23 federally designated Census Bureau Research Data Centers in the country. PRB President and CEO Jennifer Sciubba framed the launch around the organization's own century-long dependence on public data: "For more than 95 years, PRB has relied on public data to advance health and well-being — and these data are now vulnerable."

The Forum arrived directly in response to a wave of federal data disruptions that began in January 2025, when incoming executive orders triggered the removal or modification of thousands of government web pages and datasets, disproportionately touching public health, environmental, and education data. Amy O'Hara, a Research Professor at MDI and President of the Association of Public Data Users, described the moment plainly: "Data users urgently need a place to organize their efforts."

What It Is

Structurally, the Forum is a hosted online community (built on the Higher Logic platform) rather than a research institute or advocacy shop in its own right. It functions as a discussion board, blog, and events calendar organized around a single group, "Federal Data Users," where members post questions, share alerts about data disappearing from agency websites, and coordinate around meetings like the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) annual conference and the Federal Statistical Research Data Center annual conference.

The Forum builds on PRB's earlier and larger community effort, the ACS Data Users Group, established in 2014 to support the roughly 7,000-plus researchers, planners, and analysts who rely on the American Community Survey. The Federal Data Forum extends that same peer-support model — problem-solving, referrals to alternative data sources, direct lines to Census Bureau staff — to the federal statistical system as a whole, at a moment when that system is under unusual strain.

The disappearance of key health, justice, environmental, and education data represents more than just lost numbers — it signals a fundamental threat to evidence-based decision-making in America.— PRB, "Why We're Starting a New Federal Data Forum" (2025)

What the Forum Is Responding To

Beginning in January 2025, U.S. federal agencies removed or altered more than 8,000 web pages and roughly 3,000 datasets, concentrated in areas the incoming administration had flagged for review — DEI-related content, gender and reproductive health data, environmental policy, and related social-program data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Education were named specifically in PRB's own launch materials as sources of removed historical data and research. Some CDC health pages were restored under a federal court order in February 2025 after a lawsuit by Doctors for America; much of the broader dataset loss, including EPA's EJScreen environmental-justice mapping tool and NOAA's climate.gov infrastructure, was not.

PRB is explicit that it does not see itself duplicating the technical rescue work already underway elsewhere, notably the Data Rescue Project's efforts to mirror and preserve altered or discontinued government datasets. The Forum instead positions itself as a coordination and early-warning layer — a place where the people trying to use federal data day to day can find out what has changed, what is still available, and who else is working the same problem.

Current State

As of its most recent activity, the Forum's "Federal Data Users" community numbers in the hundreds of members and remains active, with discussion threads addressing practical questions (data-vintage choices for Current Population Survey estimates, workshop announcements) alongside direct alerts about further agency data changes — including, in late 2025, member posts tracking the effects of a lengthy federal government shutdown on data releases. A newer "ACS Data Users Group" page has since been folded into the same site, consolidating PRB's two federal-data communities under one roof.