In November 2016, the U.S. elected a new president who had sworn to roll back important environmental protections, dismantle the EPA, and who had once called climate change a “hoax.” In the context of warming global temperatures, rising tides, and oil pipeline battles, a dozen colleagues at universities and nonprofits across the country got together online, and decided to do something. We were concerned about the continued existence of federal environmental agencies—particularly in their abilities to protect the most vulnerable among us—as well as the preservation and accessibility of important environmental and climate data. More broadly, we were concerned with the collective investment in public research and agencies.
From our initial email we grew into the Environmental buy sales lead Data & Governance Initiative (pronounced “edgy”), today a North American-wide network that includes 175 members from more than 30 different academic institutions, 10 nonprofits, and caring and committed volunteers who come from a broad spectrum of work and life backgrounds.
Our work has included crowd-sourced archiving federal environmental datasets, monitoring and reporting on changes to federal environmental agency websites, and interviewing employees at EPA and OSHA. Major news outlets have reported on us, from the Washington Post to CNN to the New York Times, and we have contributed to and helped shape an ongoing, national discussion on the value of federal environmental protections, and the need for accessible and accountable data infrastructures and publicly-engaged forms of data stewardship.
