How DOGE’s push to amass data could hurt the reliability of future U.S. statistics

Part of the destruction of government institutions under the Trump administration:

Falling public participation in surveys and trust in government have plagued the U.S. Census Bureau for decades.

And some of the agency’s current and former workers say there’s a new complication to gathering enough survey responses to produce key statistics for the country.

The Trump administration’s murky handling of data, which has sparked investigations and lawsuits alleging privacy violations, has become one of the reasons people cite when declining to share their information for the federal government’s ongoing surveys, these workers say.

“I got more people asking me how I know information isn’t going to be sold or given away,” says a former field representative, who says they were met with “a lot of suspicion” and specific mentions of Elon Musk, President Trump’s billionaire adviser who set up the DOGE team, from some households they tried to interview earlier this year. The former bureau employee, who was let go as part of the Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal government, asked not to be named because they fear retaliation.

A current field representative says they don’t “feel as comfortable” in their role as they felt asking questions for surveys last year — and neither do some people who had previously shared their information. One person specifically mentioned DOGE when declining a follow-up interview, says the current representative, who asked NPR not to name them because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

“It’s a system that runs on trust, and the trust, I would say, has been declining,” the current field representative says. “It makes me sad as an American that distrust is at that level. But I do understand it. I fear for the data I’m collecting. Is it going to be misused? And the privacy guarantees that I describe to people — are those going to be respected?”

These questions don’t surprise Nancy Bates, a former senior researcher for survey methodology at the bureau. Bates has tracked declining public participation in the census going back to the 1990 tally.

Federal law prohibits the bureau from releasing information that would identify a person or business to anyone, including other federal agencies and law enforcement. But a report Bates helped prepare during the first Trump administration found 28% of people surveyed in 2018 said they were very or extremely concerned the bureau would not keep their 2020 census answers confidential.

“Even prior to DOGE, the Census Bureau was always dealing with a level of mistrust about privacy and confidentiality,” says Bates, who, after retiring from the agency in 2020, helped lead its 2030 census advisory committee before the Trump administration disbanded it. “I absolutely can see why the public concern would be increased following these unauthorized and illegal access to data.”…

Source: How DOGE’s push to amass data could hurt the reliability of future U.S. statistics