An Interview with the Data Rescue Project Steering Committee – “Federal data are an essential public good, enabling cutting-edge research and underpinning decision making by governments, businesses, and individuals. However, continued public access to these data is no longer assured as federal agencies have removed datasets from government websites. Librarians, archivists, and other information professionals dedicated to the preservation and accessibility of knowledge have responded by building an independent infrastructure to preserve at-risk federal data for continued public use. The Data Rescue Project, a collaboration between IASSIST, RDAP, and the Data Curation Network, is among the best organized and highest profile efforts to safeguard vital federal data. Since February, the Data Rescue Project and over 500 volunteers have identified and preserved public access to over 1,200 vulnerable federal reports, datasets, and resources. We exchanged emails recently with members of the Data Rescue Project Steering Committee to learn more about their work, the value of federal data, preservation and access policies of previous administrations, and the types of data that are particularly vulnerable to being altered or removed from the public sphere…”