Data Difficulty: How DOGE Could Hurt The Census And More
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Hansi LeWong. I cover federal agencies. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover government restructuring. And today on the show, data. Elon Musk and the team that calls itself the Department of Government Efficiency have gathered a ton of it.

but without providing many answers on how or what their ultimate plans are with it. And now, it seems like those efforts are actually making it harder for other parts of the government to produce accurate and reliable statistics about the country. Hansi, this is your lane. You are our government, my personal government data guru. So I'm hoping you could just get us up to speed on what you're hearing here. Oh my, that's quite a title. Thank you, Miles. I think I've earned it because I covered the Census Bureau.

And so they're known to produce the census results as other key statistics as well. And they've had a major problem for decades. Fewer people willing to answer survey questions, share their personal information for these government surveys and low levels of trust in the government. And I talked to current and former workers for the Census Bureau recently. They conduct these interviews for these ongoing surveys, like the one that produces the monthly jobs report, for example.

And some people they're trying to interview have specifically brought up Doge or Elon Musk when they declined to participate. And these workers asked NPR not to name them because they fear retaliation or they weren't given permission to speak publicly. But

They're getting more questions about how they know information collected for the survey won't be sold or given away, for example. And the current worker told me they themselves fear the data they're collecting could be misused in the privacy guarantees. Things like people's responses will only be used to produce statistics and not share with other federal agencies, including for law enforcement. Those kinds of guarantees enshrined in federal law won't be respected. Wow.

But as you mentioned, this is not a new problem exactly, right? This is something that the Census Bureau has been dealing with at some level in the last few years. Can you explain that? Yeah, you know, participation, like I said, in these federal surveys and trust in government has been on the decline for decades. So not a new problem, but

A lot of data experts I talk to are concerned about this push by the Doge team of the Trump administration to gather government records, to amass them for really unclear to the full extent what they're trying to do. You know, that could have some long term consequences also.

on people's trust in the government, their perception of what the government is doing with their personal information, a potential weakening of the government's credibility as a steward of people's information. And you can't have reliable, accurate statistics without public trust. And when that takes a hit, that public trust, it can take a very long time to rebuild. In the meantime, the country still needs monthly jobs numbers, census results for redistricting, for example.

Yeah, I mean, Stephen, you've done a lot of reporting over the last few months on Doge's efforts around data. How real are the fears, I guess, that these people seem to be voicing? Well, Miles, there's a lot of procedures in place to assuage those fears and to make sure that the people that have access to this sensitive data only access what they need to know and why they need to know it is a big part of this.

There's things called the systems of records notice, which is this public information for an agency to say, hey, here's all the data we have. Here's how we're collecting it. Here's how we're storing it. Here's how we're keeping it safe. And here's why we need to use this data.

There's been a lot of data access by Doge and not a lot of information. For example, there are fewer than 50 people at the Social Security Administration that have access to the most sensitive financial information that it contains.

And there's a Doge staffer that, according to court filings, was given access to that, but also has access to government HR files at the Office of Personnel Management and also has access to student loan data at the Department of Education. And that's not normal.

The other thing about Doge is there hasn't been a whole lot of information about what they're using this data for. A lot of what Doge has done with this data has been done in secret, and we don't really know other than what's come out in court filings or what has come out with...

Doge themselves talking about what they've done. Case in point, we have seen examples of Doge and Doge affiliates sort of bragging about using data they've combined from different agencies for President Trump's immigration enforcement policies or to try to catch claims of people unlawfully voting.

Well, I want to come back to this idea that this broader distrust of the government that seems to be building Hansi is impacting how easily census staffers are able to get information. I mean, can you lay out the stakes a little bit? I guess what would the impact be if down the road statistics are less accurate because people are more hesitant to answer?

Well, we're talking about statistics like the monthly jobs numbers that help us understand the state of the U.S. economy, helps move markets. A lot of policymaking happens based on those numbers. If those numbers are skewed and accurate, that could have major ramifications, economic ramifications. And then there are political ramifications if we're talking about the statistics that are produced through the census. The 2030 census is coming up.

You know, those are the numbers used to determine each state's share of congressional seats, electoral college votes. That's data that's used to redraw voting maps at every level of government across the country, not to mention used to allocate federal funding for public services. And so, again, major implications if this data that, you know, a lot of us may take for granted is skewed in some way.

So, Hansi, how has the government responded to this idea that people might be more hesitant to answer questions from the government? I've reached out to the White House and spokesperson Kushra Sai said in an email that, you know, quote, a small group of people refusing to engage with census field representatives is not a new development. And that extrapolating, quote, some widespread distrust of the census because of Doge is a hard stretch.

unquote. And I also reached out to the Census Bureau and its acting director, Ron Jarman, said that the Bureau is committed to providing accurate and timely data and that there's new technology and data science helping to modernize data collection and produce high quality statistics efficiently. I think the context to keep in mind is that a lot of

data experts outside the Bureau are still concerned that, yes, there has been this long-standing issue of low public trust and declining self-response rates. They're concerned that all of the controversies surrounding how the Trump administration has handled data, specifically how the Doge team has handled data, that that will have lasting impacts on the public's perception. All right, we'll take a quick break, but more on all of this in just a moment.

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And we're back. So, Stephen, I want to focus in on this idea that you brought up a minute ago about data being used potentially for immigration enforcement. You have some new reporting about Doge's request to some state level agencies. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So in recent weeks, there has been a push by Doge to use the data that it's gathered for immigration purposes. One example is Doge and the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a request last month to states asking for data about people that apply for federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

And what we know through reporting that I did with NPR's Jude Jaffe Block is that some of those requests were asking more about data dealing with immigration status and less about other fields like employment history and income levels and things that you would expect to be used to find examples of waste management.

fraud and abuse. And so this request is raising alarms from some people that maybe Doge and USDA is trying to use that data for immigration purposes and trying to identify people that they would like to have removed for the country. You know, one thing that I think we should keep in mind here is that the federal government statistics have long had problems fully reflecting certain

populations in the country, you know, specifically, you know, for example, in the census, people of color have been undercounted while white people who do not identify as Hispanic have been overcounted for decades. And, you know, we see similar disparities in other government statistics. And there's a real fear here that what the Trump administration is doing, how it's handling data could potentially have more of a chilling effect on

among some communities more so than others, and specifically immigrant communities, communities of color that already have lower levels of trust in the federal government and how they might use people's personal information, misuse it, not follow federal laws that protect people's privacy, levels that are lower than for people who are white and don't identify as Hispanic. You know, this is according to research that the censor has done ahead of the 2020 census, for example.

It's interesting. I have reported on some aspects of this as a voting reporter. And there are, when I talk to voting officials, a lot of wishes and dreams that the government wasn't so siloed, that data in all of these different states and all of these different places work together a little bit better. Hansi, I guess as you talk to experts about these fears, about what Doge is doing and people's kind of being a little bit more hesitant to give over their information, do you

Are experts kind of worried about that data sharing more broadly, or is it about specifically how it's happening? It's really about...

Thank you.

and advisory committees that have recommended creating some type of national data service that helps bring together government records across the federal government in order to produce statistics and with safeguards for protecting people's privacy. And those last bits, you know, that's what's missing, critics of what the Trump administration is doing say. And that's what is raising a lot of concerns and red flags.

And it's causing some unease right now among statisticians who, you know, are not necessarily against the concept of creating more efficiency, perhaps through combining data sets. But, you know, they're interested in it for producing more accurate, more reliable statistics. The Trump administration has not put that at the forefront of what's driving their efforts. And it's really not clear what exactly are all of their motivations are.

I mean, Stephen, where does this go from here? I mean, are you expecting to get more transparency from the Trump administration on what all this data is going to be used for? Or I mean, what are you watching over the next couple of weeks and months from a data perspective?

Well, there are more than a dozen lawsuits that have been filed over Doge's data access at these agencies. They're in various stages of the legal process. In the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there was a lawsuit filed and

motion for a temporary restraining order was withdrawn from the people suing because the USDA said in a statement that we haven't actually collected any data yet because we are following all of the privacy laws and procedures. And so that one is on hold for now, though there are still legal questions about if the USDA can even ask for that data.

And I think we're going to see the full effects of this data consolidation, this breaking down silos executive order that the president put forth over the coming weeks and months, because it's not as easy as just copy and pasting something into an Excel spreadsheet when you're talking about hundreds of millions of people and all sorts of information about them.

Wow. So a lot to watch there, but we can leave it there for today. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Hansi Luang. I cover federal agencies. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover government restructuring. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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