LibGuides: Finding Government Data During the 2025 Adminstrative Transition: General Data Resources

Background

Transitions from one presidential administration to another usually involves some changes to federal government websites. January 2025 saw an increase in such changes. This guide is meant to assist researchers with finding government datasets that may no longer be available on official government websites.

Additional resources will be added as they become available. If you have suggestions for additional resources to include on this guide, please contact Julia Ezzo (julia@msu.edu).

GovWayback

Access historical versions of U.S. government websites from before January 20, 2025 with a simple URL change.

How it works: Take any .gov URL and add wayback.com right after .gov, and you'll be redirected to the Wayback Machine's archived version of the page.

Examples:

Simple domain:
www.epa.gov → www.epa.govwayback.com

Specific page:
www.whitehouse.gov/administration → www.whitehouse.govwayback.com/administration

Complex URL:
www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2 → www.congress.govwayback.com/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2

You can learn more at the GovWayback website.

Freely Available General Sites With Data

Find Lost Data
This search tool provides links for data that have been downloaded from federal, state, and local agencies. Boston University School of Public Health.
The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Web Archive
Harvested by Library Services and Content Management (LSCM) and U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). To provide permanent public access to federal agency web content, the FDLP harvests selected U.S. Government web sites in their entirety.
End of Term Web Archive
Captures and preserves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes since 2008.
Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
Explore more than 916 billion web pages saved over time.
Preserving Public U.S. Federal Data
Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. They have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal Github repositories, and PubMed.
DataLumos
A crowd-sourced repository for valuable government data
IPUMS
IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. Surveys include:
U.S. Census and American Community Survey microdata from 1850 to the present
Current Population Survey microdata including basic monthly surveys and supplements from 1962 to the present
Historical and contemporary U.S. health survey data from NHIS(1963-present) and MEPS (1996-present)
Survey data on the science and engineering workforce in the U.S. from 1993 to the presen
Healthy Regions & Policies (HeRoP) Lab - U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Preserved datasets and guidances include: The Center for Disease Control (CDC); The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
PublicData
Mirrored and archived public data on locally hosted git server. Includes retrieved data sets from CDC, DoE, NIH, and NOAA.
The Data Liberation Project
An initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest.

Dataverse
Portal for research data from the U.S. and around the world. Discover, share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Data Archive
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), established in 1962, is an integral part of the infrastructure of social science research. ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. Search this site for holdings. Data downloads are free of charge by registering with an MSU email address.
Dryad Digital Repository
The Dryad Digital Repository is a curated resource that makes research data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad is a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of data types. Anyone can search and download data for re-use, and Dryad provides a citation to credit the creator. Members of Michigan State University can create an account, deposit dataset and associated files, and manage those in this digital repository. Owning an ORCID ID (https://orcid.org) is encouraged.

Harvard Dataverse
Predominantly health and environment data.
Democracy's Library: Freely Accessible Government Data
From the Internet Archive
DataRefuge Dataverse
DataRefuge is also an initiative committed to identifying, assessing, prioritizing, securing, and distributing reliable copies of federal data so that it remains available to researchers.
Roper Center
Collected over 50,000 files (datasets and documentation) from 22 federal survey projects. Efforts to this point have been focused on acquiring the files and ensuring backup copies are preserved on multiple servers.
Safeguarding Research
Based in the EU, USA, and globally. Have several large-scale efforts, including a 350GB web archive of CDC, including all 30.000 files from archive.cdc.gov and much more.
Policy Commons Open Collection
Requires free registration to access archive. Agencies included in this data and documents archive are the EPA, USAID, CDC, Department of Education, and more.

Resources Available to MSU-Affiliates

Sage Data Core
Sage Data Core is a collection of U.S. and international datasets sourced from governmental, commercial, and private organizations. Sage Data Core allows you to search and browse billions of datasets, compare and contrast variables of interest, and create customized exportable charts and tables.
ProQuest Statistical Insight
Indexes and abstracts statistical publications from the US government, state governments, international organizations, and professional associations. Includes ProQuest Statistical Datasets and the ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. [It is the WWW version of 3 print indexing sources: American Statistics Index (ASI), Index to International Statistics (IIS), and Statistical Reference Index (SRI).] Links to selected full-text materials are provided, some in spreadsheet format. The Library owns almost all the materials indexed in ProQuest Statistical Insight.
PolicyMap
Policymap is an online data and mapping application that gives access to over 15,000 indicators related to housing, crime, mortgages, health, jobs, demographics and education. Data are available at all common geographies (address, block group, census tract, zip code, county, city, state, MSA) as well as unique geographies like school districts and political boundaries. Data come from both public and proprietary sources. Many of the public files are available for download. Through PolicyMap, you can access all data in interactive maps, tables, charts, reports and through a unique analytic tool. You may also upload your own address level data and share your data and interactive maps with others.

Includes plumbing and kitchen data from 2011-2015 US Census Annual Community Survey.
Social Explorer
Create maps and reports from selected census statistics. 1790 to 1930: County, state and national data. 1940-2000: Census tract, county, state and national data. 2006- : ACS. Also includes religion data, U.S. Election data, UK Census 2011 data, and Ireland Religion data. Generate thematic maps for census tracts.
SimplyAnalytics
***Access is allowed for only five users at a time. It is necessary to create a free personal account to access this resource.***
A web-based mapping tool that lets users create professional-quality thematic maps and reports using powerful demographic, business, and marketing data. Includes MRI Consumer Survey, Claritas PRIZM, and SimmonsLOCAL data.
Statista
Provides statistics and reports on a wide variety of topics including agriculture, advertising, health, hospitality, consumer goods and services, sports, technology, transportation, and much more.