Problem: The census is politicized: questions are voted on by a subset of the population and is only conducted once every 5-10 years.
Solution: I find it interesting to look through the index of old census questions. The census seems to give a window of insight into what people of a particular time-period cared about (such as questions about slavery and number of slaves before 1870 or questions about literacy rates and reading/writing rates after 1840). All throughout America’s history, we’ve realized that data is powerful. After all, as many argue, you can’t change what you can’t measure. Thus, a company that facilitates a more frequent census about more than 50 questions every decade would be valuable for generating actionable data and change in the world. This in depth census, a census run by a private company, would have a goal of getting more detailed (non-political) information about a variety of data points. It would also poll an audience beyond just the US. One company which did this well for decades was Gallup.
Monetization: Cutting the data in unique ways and selling reports of insights.
Contributed by: Billion Dollar Startup Ideas