Enrolling over 30 million acres‎,‎ the U‎.‎S‎.‎ Conservation Reserve Program ‎(‎CRP‎)‎ is the largest conservation program in the United States‎.‎ Under the guidelines of the CRP‎,‎ the federal government pays farmers to stop farming their land in the hopes of achieving a variety of conservation goals‎,‎ including the reduction of soil erosion‎,‎ improvement of water quality‎,‎ and creation of wildlife habitat‎.‎ In Conserving Data‎,‎ James T‎.‎ Hamilton explores the role of information in the policy cycle as it relates to the CRP‎.‎ The author asks how the creation and distribution of information about what is going on across these millions of enrolled acres has influenced the development of the program itself‎.‎ Of the many CRP stakeholders‎,‎ each accesses a different set of information about the CRP s operations‎.‎ Regulators have developed the Environmental Benefits Index as a rough indicator of a field s conservation benefits and adopted that measure as a way to determine which lands should be granted conservation contracts‎.‎ NGOs have used publicly available data from these contracts to show how CRP monies are allocated‎.‎ Members of Congress have used oversight hearings and GAO reports to monitor the Farm Service Agency s conservation policy decisions‎.‎ Reporters have localized the impact of the CRP by writing stories about increases in wildlife and hunting on CRP fields in their areas‎.‎ Conserving Data brings together and analyzes these various streams of information‎,‎ drawing upon original interviews with regulators‎,‎ new data from Freedom of Information Act requests‎,‎ and regulatory filings‎.‎ Using the CRP as a launch point‎,‎ Hamilton explores the role of information‎,‎ including ‎'‎hidden information‎,‎‎'‎ in the design and implementation of regulatory policy‎.‎