Rescuing Government Data From Trump Has Become a National Movement

"For now, the data lives on Amazon storage servers. But the sheer volume of government data out there—anywhere between ten terabytes and five thousand times that number, or 50 petabytes—means organizers are working with Dat and the InterPlanetary File System to synchronize multiple copies of the data across the web, said O’Brien. As of yet, DataRefuge and EDGI are both accepting offers for funding but it’s all volunteer run... sort of, explained Laurie Allen, assistant director of digital scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania libraries. Universities support work that would fall under many of the volunteers’ job descriptions, but it’s still extra work. 'I don’t stop doing this at the end of the day at 5PM,' said Allen.

Ultimately, O’Brien said, the many DataRescue-affiliated groups will continue to learn and modify their process to be more efficient, since their work is a monumental task that no one has done before. 'We’re going to archive a government in a repeatable fashion.'"