Data Rescue Project Archives US Government Datasets Facing Removal

Volunteers with the Data Rescue Project have spent more than a year archiving federal government datasets and webpages that were removed or changed during the current administration. The effort began in 2025 after notifications of sudden deletions prompted a rush to download material before it disappeared.

One computer programmer who joined the project described waking each morning to download as many datasets as possible, continuing through the afternoon and sometimes overnight when alerts arrived. "We didn’t really know what was going to go down usually until right before it happened," the programmer, who asked not to be named, said.

The administration has removed or altered thousands of webpages and datasets covering climate change, reproductive health, international aid and information related to LGBTQ people. Such data is used by officials, researchers and service providers for safety, policy and operational purposes.

The Data Rescue Project now includes more than 800 participants worldwide, many of whom devote up to 40 hours per week to the work in addition to their regular jobs. A university data librarian who helped found the group said the majority of volunteers are librarians and academics, with programmers from the open-source community and retirees also taking part.

Participants share the view that public data should remain accessible. Early efforts focused on rapid downloads from agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As the rate of deletions slowed last fall, the project shifted toward longer-term preservation strategies.

The group now uploads archived material to DataLumos, a searchable public repository hosted by the University of Michigan.

Volunteers create metadata descriptions for each item to help users understand what the data measures. One university library official noted that simply downloading files is insufficient for true preservation. The project has also rebuilt certain tools using archived copies after original versions were taken offline.

As of late April, more than 3,000 items have been archived across hundreds of government departments, according to the project’s public tracker. The repository has recorded more than 18,900 downloads. Saved material includes an entire archive of NASA webpages, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Feather Atlas with high-resolution bird images, and datasets on critical infrastructure that were used to create a replacement version called HIFLD Next after the original was removed by the Department of Homeland Security last summer.

The group has also preserved CDC data on queer and trans people that was later altered on government sites. gov, though the total number produced by the government is difficult to track. One medical data librarian who co-founded the project said it is impossible to archive everything.

A former Google engineer joined after concluding that intentional deletion of information used to shape policy could make the public easier to control. The programmer who requested anonymity said the work provided purpose during a period of chronic pain and unemployment that had left him housebound.

He now focuses on longer-term storage systems rather than daily emergency downloads. The Data Rescue Project is one of more than 20 organizations and thousands of individuals working to protect public data access through various methods. One founding member described the effort as a social movement but noted it would not involve large-scale public demonstrations.