In early February, President Trump’s administration made a change to the White House website. The site’s digital updates are often small and insignificant — updating a photo, fixing a broken link — and therefore may go unnoticed. But this one was different, and it could have an impact on every single American. The update eliminated the White House’s open data.
Summary.
Data is under attack. And it is the very leaders of our government and economy who are waging the war. They have made it acceptable to manipulate raw data in a way that benefits them financially or politically — and it has caused public confidence in the veracity of information to completely erode. If anyone is allowed to simply change a number, or delete a dataset, who are citizens supposed to believe? Where, or how, can we get our data back? The answer lies with the public — or public blockchains, to be more specific. Our data problem doesn’t have to be a crisis; it can be an opportunity – a chance for our business leaders and policymakers to rebuild a foundation of trust in the critical data we all depend on.