OPINION — It might be 2019, but our government’s data infrastructure is largely stuck in the 20th century.

That’s a big problem in the era of the information age. Failing to use data to improve government’s programs and services means taxpayers may not be getting what they pay for. It also means our public discourse suffers when figuring out what problems should be addressed and the best ways to do so.

Over the holidays, a family discussion turned to a question about whether there are disparities in drowning deaths among the country’s minority population. To find the answer, I did what any Ph.D. researcher steeped in the intricacies of statistics would do — I Googled it.

My search directed me to a brief from the National Center for Health Statistics that concluded disparities unequivocally exist in drowning deaths by race and ethnicity. Major ones. It turns out black children, ages 11 to 12, are 10 times more likely to drown than white kids the same age. By any measure, this is a public health concern. And with that quick research, we had facts we could all agree on that framed our understanding of an important societal problem.

The National Center for Health Statistics is one of just a handful of government agencies capable of answering this type of important, complex and multi-faceted question. Still, the organization is not without its challenges when it comes to giving us information to find better solutions to important problems — and sometimes determine whether there’s a problem in the first place.