Changes in data types and availability will drive innovations of public policy and management research in the next decade. Along with advancement of technology, we are able to get access to an increasingly amount of good data nowadays. What is really new?

    (1). More access to administrative data linked across agencies. More comprehensive and complete individual profiles enable us to do researches on the basis of full population data instead of sampling, which may generates better models and public policy changes.

    (2). The content of some of these datasets are new and different explanations for reasons for heterogeneous responses to public policies. This can reduce omitted variable bias.

    (3). Geo-spatial data are now accessible and easier to use. Massive amount of real-time data is coming from various new sources, such as credit card information, information on social network site, surveillance information, and so forth.

    (4). Big data is a popular concept in recent years. The content of big data will create huge shifts in how we think about and conduct public policy and administrative researches. The key question here is that how can we use it in a useful way.

    (5). Data and methodology are co-dependent, and changes in data lead to methodological change, which creates new opportunities for methodologists at the same time.

    (6). From the perspective of public policy and management education, changes in data nature require teachers to rethink about teaching contents and response correspondingly, and this also push students to learn new skills, such as data processing.