Biden Creates Road Map for Equitable State and Local Data

Source: Government Technology // Published: March 2021

Data from marginalized communities is often underreported, meaning their needs are hidden from policymakers. President Biden’s initial actions on equitable data pave a path for state and local governments to follow.

On his first day in office, President Biden issued a flurry of administrative actions to reverse a number of President Trump’s policies and address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. One of these included an executive order to advance racial equity and provide support for underserved communities. Notably, the order recognizes that achieving this goal will be difficult, if not impossible, without better data. This is a lesson that many state and local governments should take to heart by revisiting their collection policies to ensure data is equitable.

The executive order establishes that it is the policy of the Biden administration to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” To that end, the order dedicates a section to establishing an interagency working group on equitable data tasked with identifying inadequacies in federal data collection policies and programs, and recommending strategies for addressing any deficiencies.

An inability to disaggregate data prevents policymakers from identifying disparate impacts of government programs on different populations in a variety of areas including health care, education, criminal justice, workforce and housing. Indeed, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has found that “data collection and reporting are essential to effective civil rights enforcement, and that a lack of effective civil rights data collection is problematic.”

This problem has repeatedly been on display throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, at the outset of the pandemic last year, nearly half of states did not report data on race or ethnicity on those who were tested, hospitalized or died of COVID-19. And while the government has tried to take a data-driven response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of data about different groups means that their needs are often hidden from policymakers.

Consider disability data: Data from New York and Pennsylvania shows that adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities have contracted and died from COVID-19 at higher rates than the rest of the population. Multiple factors may contribute to this outcome, such as pre-existing health conditions, living in a group home or other caregiving setting, or relying on public transportation. But many states do not collect and report information about disability in their COVID-19 data. As a result, government leaders have only partial visibility into the toll of the pandemic on people with disabilities, which has resulted in worse outcomes. For example, a number of states have overlooked people with disabilities in their coronavirus vaccine distribution plans, delaying access for this at-risk group.