Data for the People!

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Data for the People! features Leremy Colf , a Senior Fellow with the Data Foundation's Center for Data Policy, who recently wrote a policy brief about six practical, high-impact policy options to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency by reducing waste and improving response effectiveness. Colf is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahom...

Send us Fan Mail The latest episode of Data for the People! features David J. Hayes , an attorney and legal scholar who served in three presidential administrations, including twice as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior, and most recently as Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy. He is currently an Advisory Board Member and Co-Founder of the Center for Clim...

Send us Fan Mail The guest for this episode of Data for the People! is Natalie Evans Harris , Chief Data Officer for the State of Maryland and a Data Foundation Senior Fellow. Harris discusses how Maryland is building a statewide data infrastructure that enables agencies to work together, strengthens data governance, improves data literacy, and prepares the state for responsible artificial intelli...

Send us Fan Mail At the 2026 Data Summit, Leanne Spaulding, Resilience and Data Lead at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, moderated a conversation on how better data can support resilience, environmental risk management, and growth. She was joined by Emily Dhingra, Senior Project Manager for Climate Resilience and Adaptation at AECOM; Kathie Dello, Assistant Secretary for Resilience at t...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Data for the People! shares highlights from the Data Foundation’s 2026 Data Summit, focusing on philanthropy’s role in supporting a stronger shared data ecosystem. Data Foundation President and CEO Nick Hart moderates a conversation with Daniella Lowenberg of the Data Funders Collaborative and Rachel Snyderman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation . Lowenberg describ...

Send us Fan Mail In the latest episode of Data for the People! , Data Foundation Senior Fellow Taka Ariga discusses the prospect of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance government efforts to prevent fraud and other types of improper payments in public benefit programs. Ariga was the first Chief Data Scientist at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where he also directed GAO’s Innovation...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Data for the People! explores a problem with climate and environmental data that burdens public agencies and the private sector: Currently, federal and state regulators have a host of different reporting requirements for climate and environmental data, such as data on greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, the data get reported in multiple ways to multiple regulato...

Send us Fan Mail On the latest episode of Data for the People! , Brett Loper discusses policy options for using data tools to prevent improper payments in federal benefit programs. The options appear in a new report produced by the Data Foundation and our Fiscal Intelligence Initiative, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.  Loper is currently the Executive Vice President for Policy...

Send us Fan Mail On the latest episode of Data for the People! , Claire McKay Bowen discusses the role federal statistics play in our daily lives, strategies for communicating the value of government data, and her vision for the future of data sharing and data privacy.  Bowen is a data privacy expert who is currently a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, an adjunct professor at Stonehill College...

Send us Fan Mail The latest episode of Data for the People! features David Dutwin , executive director and senior vice president of AmeriSpeak , a panel-based research platform from NORC at the University of Chicago . Dutwin joins the show to discuss Americans’ trust in federal statistics, science, institutions, and one another. Learn more about the American Statistical Association's The Nati...

Send us Fan Mail In the inaugural episode of Data for the People! , J.B. Wogan (host) and Nick Hart (President and CEO of the Data Foundation) discuss the Data Foundation's mission to promote open data and evidence-informed policymaking. They introduce Bill Hoagland, Senior Vice President at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who talks about the federal government's use of data and evidence f...

Send us Fan Mail Every day, millions of Americans rely on federal data—often without realizing it. From checking the weather forecast to planning retirement, from tracking disease outbreaks to measuring economic growth, government datasets power decisions that shape our daily lives and drive billions in economic activity. Welcome to Data for the People! , a new podcast from the Data Foundation tha...