Comment by bilekas
1 year ago
I'm not sure if it's nefarious or not, but I would have to lean on the side of "If the goverment is quietly removing information then probably it's not for the benefit of the public.
Also from their own site at data.gov
> The United States Government’s open data site is designed to unleash the power of government open data to inform decisions by the public and policymakers, drive innovation and economic activity, achieve agency missions, and strengthen the foundation of an open and transparent government.
The part " to inform decisions by the public and policymakers" in particular stands out.
Anyway data sets is not exactly expensive to keep hosted for a government body so there's not really any excuse to scrub them unless they're polluted in some way ?
Even if it's polluted, you can mark it as is, with reasoning and keep it up, so you can learn what dirty/bad data is, and build quality detectors with the information contained in/with the "dirty" or "low quality" data set.