State and Local Government Statistics at a Crossroads (2007) / Chapter Skim
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6 Challenges for the Future
6 Challenges for the Future
Pages 107-124
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From page 107... ...
With these exceptions, the census describes individual state and local governments and the relationships among them, and also provides detailed measures of their economic activity. For the quarterly and annual programs, except for the loss in detail in 2001 and 2003, the Governments Division has generally managed to preserve the ability to provide needed data for key economic time series, but has been forced to eliminate some value-added features, and has reduced service to users of information on individual governments and intergovernmental relationships.
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From page 108... ...
Compounding these challenges is that, unlike many other activities of the Census Bureau, the state and local governments program involves voluntary data collection from both state government respondents that are sovereign entities and the local governments that are creatures of those sovereign entities. STRATEGIC PLANNING The state and local government statistics program is part of a larger set of Census Bureau economic programs that establish their context.
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From page 109... ...
will always be the top priority for the Census Bureau's economic statistics programs. Benchmark measures include statistics from the Economic Census and Census of Governments that are used in the national accounts and other composite measures of economic activity, such as the index of industrial production, productivity measures, and the producer price index.
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From page 110... ...
Program Improvement by the Governments Division The Governments Division has been developing its own strategic plan under the general rubrics outlined above for the Economic Directorate and addressing three areas for improvement: project management, documentation management, and knowledge management. The Census Bureau reports that project management training among the division's managers has been completed, and the division has begun to offer that training to other staff. Documentation management -- that is, managing materials that staff need to access on a regular basis -- has begun to improve.
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From page 111... ...
This initiative should help expand the reach of the Governments Division to fulfill the needs of users other than BEA and FRB for detailed data below the national level. Conclusion and Recommendation The panel supports the Governments Division's actions to improve project, documentation, and knowledge management and the Economic Directorate's across-the-board initiatives for all of its programs to obtain user feedback, undertake quality audits, and better align reporting systems with respondents' accounting practices.
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From page 112... ...
For the division to take positive steps along these lines and in other ways to increase outreach to and feedback from users, it will need the wholehearted support of the Economic Directorate. Conclusion 6-1: The current strategic planning for the Census Bureau's Economic Directorate is predicated on the likelihood of continued constrained budget resources and the need to give highest priority to providing data to support the national income and product accounts and other key economic time series.
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From page 113... ...
Recommendation 6-1: The Governments Division should include two tracks in its strategic plan: one track that plans for an environment of constrained resources and a second track that identifies ways to build support over time for enhancing the division's data series and the infor mation provided to users on the Census Bureau website. The Economic Directorate and, by extension, senior Census Bureau management, should support the Governments Division's planning efforts in this re gard and should make available some resources to begin implementing one or more aspects of the second track of the division's plan.
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From page 114... ...
Although topics related to government statistics can be vetted with either one of these two committees, the record shows that such vetting has rarely been done. The Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, which was established in 1999, has never discussed the Governments Division program, and the long-standing Census Bureau Advisory Committee of Professional Associations has discussed the Governments Division program on only two occasions since 1995: • In 1996, the division presented a paper to the advisory commit tee that described the major aspects of the program and discussed briefly four possible areas for the committee to consider regarding future data needs for the public sector: contracting out, devolution, downsizing, and acquisition of capital goods.
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From page 115... ...
. It is not surprising that the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations has had little time to devote to state and local government statistics, given that it lacks members with relevant subject-matter expertise, that it meets only twice a year, and that it must of necessity focus on the major Census Bureau programs, such as the decennial census, the Economic Census, and the American Community Survey.
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From page 116... ...
In addition, the Census Bureau should ensure that methodological issues for the Governments Division program are regularly brought before the American Statistical Association component of the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations and consider adding one or two experts in public finance to the American Economic Association component of that committee. ROLE OF STANDARDS Several sets of standards and guidelines currently exist for reporting financial and other information on state and local governments.
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From page 117... ...
The divisions can be considered as the broad objectives of government, and the groups and classes detail the means by which these broad objectives are achieved. BEA uses the COFOG classifications to organize the Census Bureau state and local government data into nine basic functions. To date, the Governments Division has not made use of the IMF or COFOG standards in its data collections.
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From page 118... ...
The two other bodies designated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to disseminate generally accepted accounting principles are the Financial Accounting Standards Board for the private sector and the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board for the federal government. GASB's mission is "to establish and improve financial reporting standards for state and local governments that they would use in their general purpose external financial reports, the objective of which is to provide information that meets the needs of the users of those financial statements." GASB follows generally accepted accounting principles to set standards for state and local government financial reporting, which have the potential to help the Governments Division with issues of classification at a broad level. GASB users -- those who prepare, audit, and use state and local government financial statements -- fall into three groups: (1)
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From page 119... ...
The full accrual basis of accounting recognizes revenues as soon as they are earned and expenses as soon as a liability is incurred, regardless of the timing of related cash inflows and outflows, If the Governments Division were to adopt the full accrual basis used in the new government-wide statement, rather than the modified accrual approach used in the fund statements, the Governments Divisions state and local government finance data would change dramatically The Governments Division is concerned that the burden placed on governments to provide data in this format might be enormous, because all governments would not necessarily have full-accrual data at the level of detail required by the Governments Division. In the process of developing Statement 34, GASB conducted user studies, sponsored academic research, and followed due process, which included three standard proposing documents, task force meetings, 25 public hearings and user focus groups, and field tests in 20 state and local governments to develop the statement and the new financial reporting model.
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From page 120... ...
Although this methodology involves more work on the part of a state or local government, GASB has found that the users of the financial statements are obtaining long-awaited information. The statement of net assets is the new balance sheet, and it focuses on the residual difference between the government's assets, including infrastructure, and liabilities.
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From page 121... ...
. Insofar as it affects state central collection programs, GASB's Statement 34 holds both potential promise and peril for the Governments Division data collection efforts.
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From page 122... ...
The CAFR is the bond rating community's primary tool for determining the ability of the borrowing government to repay the debt. Census Bureau Coordination with GASB In view of the apparently growing influence of the GASB standards as the defining standard for the development and maintenance of state and local government financial records, it is important that the Governments Division stay in communication with the GASB rule-making process and play an active role to the extent possible.
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From page 123... ...
Recommendation 6-4: The Census Bureau's Governments Division should lead a long-term research effort, with the Government Account ing Standards Board, the Government Finance Officers Association, and other organizations as appropriate, to explore the development of advisory guidelines and data definitions in a way that would allow the collection of reasonably uniform detailed finance data from a very large number of state and local governments on a regular basis. CONCLUSION The Governments Division's data collections play a critical role not only for the national income and product accounts and other economic indicators, but also for important research and policy analysis uses that require detailed, consistent, and comparable data for individual governments over time.
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From page 124... ...
Finally, the Economic Directorate should continue to strengthen its efforts to bring modern survey design, data processing, and statistical estimation methods to all of its programs, including the state and local government statistics program. Progress toward implementing a forward-looking, opportunity-seeking strategic plan for the Governments Division may of necessity be slow and halting.
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