Government Information: FDLP and More

The majority of the resources listed here are from the Data Resue Project. Click here you can access a comprehensive list of government data maintainers put together by the Data Rescue Project. You can also follow them on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/datarescueproject.org.

• Archival FRED (ALFRED) - ALFRED® allows you to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history.In general, economic data for past observation periods are revised as more accurate estimates become available. As a result, previous vintages of data can be superseded and may no longer be available from various data sources. Vintage or real time economic data allows academics to reproduce others' research, build more accurate forecasting models, and analyze economic policy decisions using the data available at the time. Currently, vintage data are available for more than 740,000 series in 9 categories:

1. Money, Banking, & Finance (20,000+)
2. Population, Employment, & Labor Markets (88,000+)
3. National Accounts (150,000+)
4. Production & Business Activity (160,000+)
5. Prices (24,000+)
6. International Data (300,000+)z
7. Greenbook Projections (9+)
8. U.S. Regional Data (870,000+)
9. Academic Data (19,000+)

The earliest vintage available is 1927-01-26 for series Industrial Production Index.

• Census Reporter – is a free, open-source platform focused on making American Community Survey (ACS) data more accessible, including the recent upload of the 2022 1-Year ACS data
• End of Term Crawl - The main coordinated effort to archive websites, but datasets have been more of a challenge.
• Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI) - They have been focused on environmental data and a good organization to follow for updates.
• Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) - Census data, economic data, and much more. FRED is an online database consisting of hundreds of thousands of economic data time series from scores of national, international, public, and private sources. FRED, created and maintained by the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, goes far beyond simply providing data: It combines data with a powerful mix of tools that help the user understand, interact with, display, and disseminate the data. In essence, FRED helps users tell their data stories.
• FEMA - complete - uploaded to ICPSR DataLumos. See this list. EDGI is also rescuing FEMA data.
• Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) – for mapping users, the GIS vendor publishes a number of U.S. Census Bureau data sets, including the ACS, through its ArcGIS Online Platform
• PolicyMap – "PolicyMap empowers organizations with unparalleled access to comprehensive mapping and data analytics tools. Our services are built for non-GIS professionals, data-literate researchers, and everyone in between. Our data warehouse contains 75,000+ geographic indicators across demographics, housing, economic conditions, infrastructure, education, environment, health, and social determinants of health from more than 170 public and proprietary sources. Our data is available via our SaaS mapping platform, embedded mapping options, or a data license. With PolicyMap, users can create custom maps in seconds, layer multiple indicators, upload and download data, publish and share maps, build dashboards, and generate reports. " It offers a free tier that can be used to view basic information down to the tract-level, but more detailed data and functionality requires a subscription.
• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) - uploaded to ICPSR DataLumos.
• IPUMS – "IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. IPUMS integration and documentation makes it easy to study change, conduct comparative research, merge information across data types, and analyze individuals within family and community contexts. Data and services available free of charge." Even when the government operates normally, many analysts turn to Minnesota Population Center products to access ACS, Current Population Survey microdata and Decennial Census data
• Data.gov - complete - rescued by Harvard University Law School LIbrary Innovation Lab - They will regularly update this resource.
• ICPSR Data Lumos  - DataLumos is an ICPSR archive for valuable government data resources. ICPSR has a long commitment to safekeeping and disseminating US government and other social science data. DataLumos accepts deposits of public data resources from the community and recommendations of public data resources that ICPSR itself might add to DataLumos. Click "Find Data" or "Add Data".
• Public Environmental Data Project 
  • A coalition committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data. 
  • February 7, 2025 - EPA’s EJScreen 2.3
  • January 31, 2025 -  CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index and Environmental Justice Index
  • January 24, 2025 - Council on Environmental Quality EJScorecard
  • January 24, 2025 - Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool
• Data Liberation Project  run by BigLocalNews and MuckRock, which are good groups to follow.
• There was a special archive created on IA of all CDC datasets publicly available as of January 28, 2025
• Datasets in Dataverse - Includes CDC's Social Vulnerability Index data.  Most of what's being placed here is data focusing on health and the environment.
• Silencing Science Tracker - joint initiative of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. It tracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information.
• Safeguarding Research - Looks like a newer effort. Unclear where they are at this point. Can add more info if anyone knows about this.
• OSF
  • Generalist repository for archiving, sharing, and storing all types of research outputs, not limited to preprints or only data.
  • OSF is available as an option for pre-prints of articles if, for some reason, they cannot be posted on official sources.
  • Many universities also have institutional repositories where research (articles, data, dissertations, etc) from that institution can be posted. They also have preservation mandates. An example is Penn’s ScholarlyCommons.
• The Climate Mirror Project
  • Has NOAA data pulled during the 2017 data rescue.

• Open Energy Data Initiative

  • A volunteer has pointed out that “key equity data” is missing from the Dept of Energy. Says they were able to find it on this site. Includes additional data from DOE.
  • Note that OEDI is run by NREL which is part of DOE, it is not an independent organization. Several energy efficiency consultants have received tips that NREL has been ordered to start taking datasets offline. It’s not clear if OEDI data may be removed or not. 

• Wayback Machine

  • The Wayback Machine is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Other projects include Open Library & archive-it.org.
  • For those websites that remain closed, copy the URL and paste it into the search box of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to see a pre-shutdown version. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has archived the messages over 80 government agencies have used to notify the public about closed and unupdated websites due to the shutdown. The site provides a search box or the ability to sort by agency title or url.
• Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University
  • Roper Center has 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.
• Data Hoarder - is coordinating community efforts to rescue data
• ArchiveTeam Warriors - They run a distributed crawler; data is uploaded to Archive.org by volunteers

For further assistance with government-related research, please

• contact Government Information Coordinator and FDLP Representative: Anna Xiong, jax2@rice.edu, or govhelp@rice.edu, 713.348.6212
• Hours
• or visit the Information Desk of Kelley Center for Government Information in the basement of Fondren Library

Fondren Databases:

Free resources:
Also consult some other related resources listed in the box "For Researchers: Alternative Access to Government Data / Websites" on this page.

Subscription databases:

For paper documents get help at the Government Information Desk in the basement of Fondren and/or check:

If there is no access to the online version, you can use the subscription ERIC databases as an index to find an ED number and check in the Kelley Center to see if we own that report on microfiche.