June 4, 2025
How DOGE’s push to amass data could hurt the reliability of future U.S. statistics
U.S. Census Bureau’s decades long trouble with falling public participation in surveys and trust in government is now compounded by DOGE’s handling of data. Distrust in how government uses data is higher among people of color, which can lead to selection bias and skewed data. Trivellore Raghunathan tells NPR:
“It is quite possible that the distrust in the government could be more prevalent in one particular community that decides that, ‘Well, we don’t want to participate in the survey.’
The whole goal of the survey is to make sure that the data is representing the population for which we are drawing inference about. And any kind of a skewness in participation will destroy that representativeness.”