LibGuides: Data and Statistics: Find Data: Government Sources

Introduction

This section provides links to various U.S. and state government data and statistics resources. Agencies within the U.S. government (e.g., NASA, Census) produce and fund the collection of a wealth of data and statistics that are free, available online, and available in many different formats. The listing is not meant to be exhaustive.

General Government Sources

Data.gov
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets.

Tracking Government Data Resources

The 2025 presidential administration has presented a rapidly changing landscape. If you are having trouble finding federal data resources in the provided links on this page or elsewhere, please refer to the following guides for assistance or reach out to us:

Business, Economy, People, and Labor

Bureau of Labor Statistics (US) Data Page
Contains U.S. federal government data in the broad field of labor economics.
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Provides estimates that illuminate key national, international, and regional aspects of the U.S. economy.

U.S. Census Bureau
Provides timely, relevant, and quality data about the people and economy of the United States.

Crime

Bureau of Justice Statistics
Provides statistics and full text reports on crime, victims, offenders, law enforcement, courts, and corrections.
FBI Uniform Crime Reports
Provides national, state, and individual agency crime statistics collected from nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Education

National Center for Education Statistics
The primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.
Virginia Department of Education
The VDOE website includes statistics & reports, school report cards, links to individual school division web sites, and more.

Health

National Center for Health Statistics
The nation's principle health statistics agency compiles information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of the people.
NNLM Dataset Catalog
"The Dataset Catalog is a catalog of biomedical datasets from various repositories for users to search, discover, retrieve, and connect with datasets to accelerate scientific research. This beta version aims to collect user feedback to inform future product development."
Center for Clinical Observational Investigations (CCOI) Dataset Profiles
"Dataset Profiles are one method CCOI uses to reduce barriers to accessing large-scale clinical datasets. Dataset Profiles highlight, summarize and aggregate information about and within a dataset. Each profile provides key details to help researchers to understand the information provided in a dataset."

Sciences

Data.nasa.gov
NASA's site for open data. Note that most dataset pages provide metadata and links to data that are housed externally.
National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)
NCEI is an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and provides access to climate, coastal, oceanographic, and geophysical data.

NOAA's products and services are diverse, and includes, among others, the National Weather Service (NWS), the National Ocean Service (NOS), and Fisheries.

DOE Data Explorer
The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) is the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) search tool for publicly available, DOE-funded data resources. Note that the data themselves are located externally at data centers, laboratories, universities, etc.