Government data guides decisions that affect us all, must be free of political influence

In her eight years as the Purdue University Fort Wayne Community Research Institute director, Rachel Blakeman has relied on state and federal data in many disciplines: economics, health, demographics, public safety and even transportation engineering. Our tax dollars fund these numbers that are available online and free for public review.

Some data can be found nearly immediately, such as the number of weekly unemployment insurance claimants from the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. Others take almost a year before release, such as the county-level gross domestic product from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Many data sets are subject to revisions as numbers get the appropriate scrutiny, because accuracy takes time.

Importantly, much of this data is produced month after month, year after year, creating the opportunity for a time series to see how things have or have not changed.

Read Blakeman’s opinion piece in The Journal Gazette (subscription required).