Defining and Celebrating Exceptional Federal Data Practices
Federal data offers insights into nearly every aspect of our society, from the strength of the job market and the economy to the health care needs of veterans and the impact of natural disasters.
This data has been a cornerstone of modern and effective government. Making government data widely available empowers leaders to make better decisions, enables more agency accountability and, ultimately, improves the public’s trust in government.
Now more than ever, it is critical for agencies to ensure government data remains available to the public. In 2025, the Trump administration reshaped the operations and management of the federal government, leading to staffing and funding changes across many agencies. Federal data collection and dissemination in some domains also transformed, with some products being canceled or paused.
The Federal Data Excellence Awards program spotlights the transformative power of accessible, transparent government data and celebrates agency efforts to improve federal data practices. The initiative, now in its second year, is a collaboration between the Partnership for Public Service and USAFacts, whose mission is to inform public knowledge on critical issues by making government data easier to access and comprehend.
In 2025, the Partnership and USAFacts reviewed our criteria for assessing federal data products and incorporated insights from federal data leaders. We held discussions with data scientists, evaluators and program officers from agencies across government, including the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs, the Federal Communications Commission, the Government Accountability Office and the Inter-American Foundation.
Through these activities, we continued to build a community of practice, learn about changes and challenges in the federal open-data landscape and identified future possible refinements for our assessment tool, the basis for choosing the Federal Data Excellence Awards winners.
