The Trump Administration’s War on Data Has Fresh Casualties

Plans to restructure an office that evaluates federal programs for children and families are part of a larger effort to shrink the government—and keep vital information from the public.

The federal government is littered with incomprehensible acronyms representing a host of divisions and agencies. But throughout the civil service there are departments with mission mandates that, while technical—and at times obscure— fulfill specific and frequently critical purposes. The great, lumbering gears of American bureaucracy spin on such offices, making them prime targets in President Donald Trump’s crusade to shrink the federal government. It may be hard to convey how much they matter until they’re under threat.

One such acronymic department is the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, or OPRE, an arm of the Administration of Children and Families, or ACF, which is housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. The OPRE conducts research and evaluation projects to study and assess a slew of ACF initiatives, including Head Start, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Health Profession Opportunity Grants, home visiting, and childcare and welfare programs. It also manages grants and contracts to research these areas, and provides clearinghouses for evidence on the effectiveness of ACF programs.

Earlier this month, an internal memo written by Assistant Secretary for Family Support Alex Adams and obtained by The New Republic announced that ACF would decentralize the work of the OPRE and transfer research responsibilities to the specific program offices overseeing child welfare, early childhood development, and family assistance. The functions of the chief data officer at OPRE would transfer to ACF’s Office of Administration, and implementation of the realignment plan would begin by mid-March.

OK, that’s a lot of jargon. Why does it actually matter if the ACF, a $70 billion agency, restructures operations for an office with a roughly $150 million budget? Critics of the change argue that placing responsibility for program research on the offices that oversee those initiatives could threaten the impartiality of the evidence, and threaten the future of current evaluation projects.

“Without a central support infrastructure to enable rigor and quality and validity and reliability, there can be a dramatic undermining of the types of research that [are] available,” said Nick Hart, the president and CEO of the Data........

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