I agree. Private enterprise has built some incredible data set. Google Street View is an incredible public good, and who knows what would be built on top of it

I agree. Private enterprise has built some incredible data set. Google Street View is an incredible public good, and who knows what would be built on top of it if it truly were public, rather than owned by Google. But some things can't really be built by private enterprise. The government can compel data reporting. You can pay credit card companies to sell you their data, but only the government should have the power tell every employer "you must tell us the names and salaries of all your employees". (Credit agencies essentially do this too, but that means they're big enough to require government regulation.) It can be onerous, though, and sometimes unnecessarily so. When I was at a charter school, every here I had to compile a data set on the demographics of our students to ensure we weren't mistreating people based on race or something. It's a very important thing for the government to be checking on, but given that we already had to send all our student's demographics, attendance, and discipline accounts to the state government, it felt redundant. I feel like the government has been moderately good at making these data sets more accessible, I'd love to see more resources put into that, as well as making their collection smoother. Building effective, efficient systems is incredibly difficult, and requires constant investment to respond to changes. I harp on "infrastructure" a lot, and I'm coming to realize that what I mean is less "roads, bridges, and trains" and more "efficient, effective systems of all types".