The future of the Department of the Interior is one in which a culture of learning ensures that data, statistics, and other forms of evidence have first-class status for inform--they're not afterthoughts or "nice-to-have," they're an essential part of how the Department does business.
To that end, Next Interior is committed to modeling the use of data and statistics, evaluation and foundational fact-finding, in its work. This page is the hub for that effort. Interested in contributing? Get in touch: evidence@nextinterior.org.
To better understand the values of the Trump Administration for Interior, Next Interior extracted top-line budgetary and staffing data from the Fiscal Year 2026 President's budget request. The Interior-specific pages, 507-600, can be found here.
We copied (a) the activity-focused budget tables and (b) top-line staffing tables for each bureau and for most of the major components of the Office of the Secretary or cross-Department programs. There are dozens of other tables with additional details and crosscuts in the proposal, but analysis of those will have to wait.
These data and related materials are archived on OSF: https://osf.io/b9kqv/
If you're interested in the future of the Department of the Interior and would like to consider how your research and development might contribute, please get in touch at evidence@nextinterior.org! Maybe we'll have a section for your data here one day.