Government Information and Data Preservation
U.S. government websites may remove or reorganize publicly available content due to changes in administration, agency restructuring, website redesigns, or other archival practices. When this happens, previously accessible reports, datasets, or publications may no longer be available at their original URLs.
This page provides guidance for those seeking such materials. There are a number of trusted archives and repositories maintained by libraries, research institutions, and nonprofit organizations that aim to preserve continued access to government information.
Government Information and Data Archives and Rescue Efforts
Government Information and Websites
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Internet Archive's Wayback MachineThe Wayback Machine systematically crawls and saves billions of webpages. Search for local, state, or federal government websites to find previous versions of webpages or pages that have been taken down.
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Gov WayBackAccess 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.
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End of Term Web ArchiveThe End of Term Web Archive (EOT) preserves public U.S. Government websites at the end of Presidential terms. The web crawl datasets are stored and made available to the public. Additional URLs can be submitted for consideration and inclusion in the EOT.
Government Data Resources
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Archive of data.gov from Harvard Law School Library Innovation LabData.gov Archive is part of a data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use. It contains over 300,000 datasets harvested from 2024-2025 in Data.gov. The archive is updated daily.
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Data Rescue ProjectThe Data Rescue Project (DRP) is a coordinated effort among a group of data organizations, including IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network, to gather, curate, clean, and catalog at-risk U.S. government data, and provide sustained access and distribution of public U.S. government data assets that are no longer available. The DRP hosts the Data Rescue Project Portal, a centralized, searchable hub, integrating datasets from multiple rescue efforts such as Public Environmental Data Partners, Safe Guarding Research & Culture, ICPSR, and more. The DRP's Current Efforts Page provides a robust list of multidisciplinary data rescue efforts.
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PolicyMap This link opens in a new windowPurged federal agency data are available on PolicyMap, including data from CDC PLACES (Population Level Analysis and Community Estimates), the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), and more.
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IPUMS-InternationalIPUMS-International is an effort to inventory, preserve, harmonize, and disseminate census microdata from around the world. The project has collected the world’s largest archive of publicly available census samples. The data are coded and documented consistently across countries and over time to facillitate comparative research. IPUMS-International makes these data available to qualified researchers free of charge through a web dissemination system.
Other Resources for Rescued U.S. Government Information
Getting Involved in Data Rescue Efforts
- Learn data rescue techniques from the Data Curation Network
- Join an event with Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP).
- Use MIT Library’s Checklist for USA Federal Data Backups
- Get involved with Data Rescue Project
- Contribute to End of Term Web Archive
- Nominate at-risk data that should be downloaded and archived by ICPSR
- Upload datasets to DataLumos