Grant Geek Diva
Dawn Duncan
This post is a continuation, in some ways, of my previous posts about governance and politics being different things (https://grantgeekdiva.wordpress.com/2024/07/12/politics-and-governance-are-not-the-same-thing/). Data, in this context, and for my purposes with this blog, has more to do with governance. Why? Because the data comes from the activities that are completed as part of governance – the day-to-day operations of government and the policies that are implemented while governance is taking place.
The federal government (and other levels of government such as local and state) has an insane amount of data. In my opinion, this is a very beautiful thing, even though many people complain about the government a lot. There is data that can be used for many useful, positive, world-changing, life-changing things. And, in truth, that is what often happens with data, even if we don’t see it publicized that often. (I 100% acknowledge that data may also be used for not so positive things, and we have many historical examples of this, but that’s a different topic that I might write about later.)