Position: The data I use appears to be gone, and I need that exact dataset

Resources WAC Playbooks
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Example: In recent years, dozens of federal datasets temporarily disappeared from agency websites during redesigns, policy transitions, or CMS template changes. During the Biden–Trump handover, many climate, health, and labor datasets appeared to vanish overnight. Large swaths of .gov content were relocated, archived, renamed, or replaced with temporary placeholders (“page under review”).

Play: Search Data.gov

Search the Data.gov catalog for relocated datasets. Datasets often move rather than disappear. Use Data.gov’s search function to locate renamed or migrated tables. https://www.data.gov/

Play: Recover

Recover missing datasets using End-of-Term Web Crawls. These archives capture federal websites at the end of each administration. https://archive.org/details/EndOfTerm2024WebCrawls

Play: Retrieve

Retrieve datasets recovered by the Data Liberation Project. This initiative restores missing or incomplete federal datasets. https://www.data-liberation-project.org/

Play: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

File a FOIA request to regain access to datasets removed without notice. If a dataset is legally public, FOIA ensures access even if it’s no longer posted. https://www.foia.gov/

Play: Mirrors

Check academic mirrors and watchdog archives. Groups like Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) mirror climate, environment, and science datasets at risk of deletion. https://envirodatagov.org/

Data Resistance: A Social Movement Organizational Autoethnography Of The Environmental Data And Governance Initiative (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7213639/)

Play: Archives

Search FindLostData to locate datasets previously removed or delisted. https://findlostdata.org/about

Anything else we should add?

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Internet Archive Canada hosts many archived datasets and digital content. You can visit the Internet Archive website and search for U.S. government datasets there.

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