Finding Lost Government Data

If you were not able to locate the datasets you were searching from the data rescue sites mentioned on the Home page at the beginning of this guide (first tab on the left in the navigation menu), make sure to check out the resources listed below by category. 

End of Term Archive

• The main coordinated effort to save U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations.
• Datasets have been more of a challenge, especially data embedded in databases.

Webrecorder US Government Web Archive

• Preserved in collaboration with the End of Term Archive.
• Webrecorder's efforts to archive US federal government at the end of the Biden administration.
• Rescued collections include:
  • Climate.gov
  • COVID.gov
  • PatentsView.org
  • FEMA
  • CDC
  • EPA
  • Department of Education
  • USAID
  • and more

DataLumos

• A crowd-sourced repository for US federal government data.
• The main repository for the Data Rescue Project’s data.
• Recently added data from FEMA, the Department of Education, and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS).

Policy Commons 2025 Open Collection

• Initiative to rescue and preserve materials from government organizations facing the removal of public information and data.
• Contains more than 17 million items from 24,000 organizations located around the world.
• Enriched and detailed metadata openly available to the public.
• Materials are archived, assigned permanent unique identifiers, and indexed for discovery through Google Scholar and academic databases.

The PEGI Project (Preservation of Electronic Government Information)

• An initiative to address national concerns regarding the preservation of electronic information by cultural memory organizations for long-term use by the public.

Data Liberation Project

• An initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest.

Additional Data Resources & Links

• An informal Proton Doc (encrypted word processing cloud software, functions similarly to Google Docs) of additional data rescue resources and links for specific disciplines.
• Contains links to archived/rescued data from the NIH, CDC, and others.

IPUMS Census & Survey Data

• Census and survey data from around the world
• Includes major data sources from the US Government (Census, American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, mapping and GIS data, and more.

Census Reporter

• An independent project to make data from the American Community Survey (ACS) easier to use.

Cornell University’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

• Public opinion research with over 50,000 files (datasets and documentation) collected from 22 federal survey projects.
• Efforts focused on acquiring the files and ensuring backup copies are preserved on multiple servers.

DataLumos 

• Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (1980-2023)
• IPEDS Series

Columbia Climate School’s Silencing Science Tracker

• Joint initiative of the Sabine Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
• Tracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education, or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information.

Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI)

• EDGI is a research collaborative and network of diverse professionals promoting evidence-based policy-making and public interest science that advances the Environmental Right-to-Know (ERTK).
• They have been focused on environmental data and are a good organization to follow for updates.
• They work with the Public Environmental Data Project (see below).

Public Environmental Data Project

• A coalition committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data.
• Recent datasets:
  • EPA’s EJScreen 2.3
  • Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool
  • CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index and Environmental Justice Index
  • Council on Environmental Quality EJ Scorecard

NOAA Heat-Index Files

• Data files for computing heat index and heat waves produced by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in support of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Harvard Dataverse - Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center (CAFE) Collection

• The CAFE Collection includes datasets from a number of US Federal agencies to enable research at the intersection of climate and human health.

Data + Screening Tools - Public Environmental Data Partners

• Committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data.
• Volunteer coalition consists of environmental, justice, and policy organizations, researchers from multiple universities, archivists, and students who depend on federal datasets and tools to support essential research, advocacy, policy development, and litigation efforts.

CDC Data on the Internet Archive

• An archive of all CDC datasets uploaded to data.cdc.gov before January 28, 2025, excluding corrupt datasets and data not publicly accessible.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Healthy Regions & Policies (HeRoP) Lab

• Preserved datasets and guidance include:
  • The Center for Disease Control (CDC)
  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  • The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

DataLumos - USAID's Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)

• USAID DHS Indicator Data
• USAID DHS Spatial Data Repository
• US Foreign Assistance
• USAID DHS Spatial Data Repository

Internet Archive - USAID Documents Mirror 

• Collection contains all USAID's publications

Data + Screening Tools - Center for Disease Control

• Environmental Justice Index
• Social Vulnerability Index
• CDC Environmental Justice Index County Map Series