Federal Data Outages and Edits Spark Trust Crisis in Public Health Info

Federal websites are increasingly experiencing outages and data modifications, prompting concerns over potential tampering with government information. Last weekend, the public-facing regulatory information site, reginfo.gov, went offline and has since only been partially restored. Dataindex.us, a group of data scientists and advocates tracking federal data changes, reported that data was missing after August 1. As of Thursday, the site's landing page indicated it was "currently undergoing revisions," but no further details were provided. Attempts to contact the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration for clarification went unanswered [1].

This incident follows a series of similar outages across federal data platforms. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s primary health data portal, data.cdc.gov, was entirely taken offline before being restored. Around the same time, users attempting to access certain data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s major survey tool encountered a message stating the area was "unavailable due to maintenance" for several days. These disruptions have raised alarms among researchers and advocates who emphasize the importance of transparency in federal data sources [1].

Further scrutiny has revealed significant changes in federal public health data sets. A study by researchers Janet Freilich and Aaron Kesselheim, published in The Lancet in July, examined 232 federal public health data sets modified in the first quarter of 2025. The study found that nearly half had been "substantially altered," with the term "gender" being replaced by "sex" in most cases. These changes have sparked concerns about the integrity and reliability of federal health data, which underpins critical public health decisions [1].

Former Census Bureau official Chris Dick, a member of dataindex.us, noted the uncertainty surrounding the recent reginfo.gov outage. He suggested it could be due to technical difficulties stemming from staffing shortages or intentional tampering, but no definitive explanation has been provided. Dick emphasized that such infrastructure is vital and that outages of this scale are not typical. "Usually, you can fix this quickly. It’s not super normal for this to go on for days," he said [1].

These developments have sparked broader discussions about the governance and oversight of federal data systems. While the U.S. Census Bureau’s main website, census.gov, remains operational and continues to provide access to a wide range of data, the recent outages and modifications highlight vulnerabilities in the federal data ecosystem. As dataindex.us and similar groups continue to monitor changes, the need for increased transparency and accountability in federal data management has become increasingly evident [1].

Source:

[1] Federal websites are going dark as evidence of mass ... (https://fortune.com/2025/08/22/federal-data-information-websites-dark-revisions/)

[2] Census.gov | U.S. Census Bureau Homepage (https://www.census.gov/)

[3] Commercial and Service Industry Machinery Manufacturing (https://data.census.gov/profile/3333_-_Commercial_and_Service_Industry_Machinery_Manufacturing?codeset=naics~3333&g=010XX00US)