EMERGE Initiative

Voices from the Data Community: How 2025 Has Impacted Public Data Users

The federal statistical system is under stress — and public data users are feeling it.

Since the start of 2025, federal statistical agencies have faced staff reductions, program cuts, data purges, and the longest government shutdown in American history. To understand how these disruptions are affecting the researchers, analysts, advocates, and planners who rely on public data every day, SSRS — through the EMERGE Initiative — conducted a landmark survey of more than 500 federal data users across academia, government, nonprofits, and the private sector.

The EMERGE Initiative seeks to provide reliable, publicly accessible data, serving as a crucial resource for state administrators, researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the American public, thereby upholding the principles of transparency and evidence-based governance. The initial task of the EMERGE Initiative will be to convene a meeting of stakeholders – both producers and users of these data – to conduct a thorough review of the emerging data gaps and recommend steps for remediation.

The report is available for download at the bottom of this page.

What We Found

Nearly every data user has been impacted.

Fully 93% of respondents say that changes to federal statistical data have affected their ability to do their job — 54% report major impacts.

Disruptions include delayed data releases, canceled programs, reduced technical assistance, and threats to data quality that have cascaded into project delays, scaled-back research, and job losses across the research community.

Workarounds exist, but none are adequate.

Data users are turning to older datasets, state and local data, private sources, and statistical modeling to compensate for gaps. Almost universally, respondents described these as imperfect substitutes. Many said plainly: there is no replacement for high-quality federal data.

The federal workforce crisis is central to the problem.

Respondents repeatedly cited staff reductions — in some agencies as steep as 30–40% — as a root cause of the disruptions they experience. The loss of institutional knowledge, reduced technical assistance, and delays in data approvals and releases all trace back to a workforce under severe strain, and a data user community facing struggling to get the information they need.

Concerns about the future are nearly universal.

Nearly 80% of respondents are very concerned that federal statistical data collections will be stopped.

More than 70% worry about public trust in federal data, and a similar share express concerns about their ability to access federal data products going forward.

These are not abstract concerns — respondents describe real consequences for communities, policymakers, and the economy.

About the Research

The SSRS EMERGE survey was conducted online from February 6 through March 9, 2026, with 521 federal data users recruited through the listservs of statistical professional associations and data archive mailing lists. The sample includes researchers, analysts, and practitioners from educational institutions (38%), nonprofit and advocacy organizations (31%), government agencies (12%), and the private sector (11%). Respondents work across a wide range of subject areas, with population and demographic data (83%), income and poverty data (68%), and employment and economic data (62%) most frequently cited.

This survey used a nonprobability sampling design; findings reflect the experiences of an engaged cross-section of the federal data user community and are not statistically generalizable to the full population of data users. The research was funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation, with advisory support from ICPSR, the Association of Public Data Users (APDU), DataIndex.us, the Minnesota State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) and the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE).

Future Considerations

The EMERGE report identifies four concrete actions that civil society organizations, funders, and researchers can take to support the federal data user community:

Curate existing alternative data tools

Build a centralized, validated index of replacement tools, documentation, and technical support resources so users can quickly identify credible substitutes for discontinued federal assets.

Build a public data user communications program

Create a proactive communications function to push information about data alternatives, emerging solutions, and methodological workarounds through the channels data users already rely on.

Archive expertise, not just data

Document the knowledge and experience of departing federal statistical staff before it is lost — preserving institutional know-how for the next generation of public data workers and any future rebuilding effort.

Launch targeted data collections on critical gaps

Identify the most consequential emerging data gaps — particularly in areas like sexual orientation and gender identity data — and support fit-for-purpose private data collection efforts to maintain baseline visibility on high-priority populations.

Curate existing alternative data tools

Build a centralized, validated index of replacement tools, documentation, and technical support resources so users can quickly identify credible substitutes for discontinued federal assets.

Build a public data user communications program

Create a proactive communications function to push information about data alternatives, emerging solutions, and methodological workarounds through the channels data users already rely on.

Archive expertise, not just data

Launch targeted data collections on critical gaps

Download The EMERGE Report

The EMERGE Initiative is a program of SSRS.

For more information, contact Chris Jackson, Senior Vice President — Civil Society Division Lead:.

Email Chris