Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency Fourth Edition (2009) / Chapter Skim
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Part II: Commentary
Part II: Commentary
Pages 14-54
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. Once established, many statistical agencies engage in all of these functions to varying degrees.
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The work of federal statistical agencies is coordinated through the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP) , created by the U.S.
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Federal statistical agencies serve the key functions of providing a broad array of information to the public and policy makers and of ensuring the necessary quality and credibility of the data. Commercial, nonprofit, and academic organizations in the private sector also provide useful statistical information, including data they collect themselves and data they acquire from government agencies and other data
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The Census Bureau was established as a permanent agency in 1902 to conduct the decennial census and related statistical activities. Many federal statistical agencies that can trace their roots back to the 19th or early 20th century, such as the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Center for Health Statistics, were organized in their current form following World War II.
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An effective statistical agency, nevertheless, will frequently play a creative, not just reactive, role in the development of data needed for policy analysis. Sometimes federal statistical agencies play additional roles, such as monitor and consultant on statistical matters to other units within the same department (see, e.g., National Research Council, 1985a)
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Just as a free enterprise economic system depends on the availability of economic information to all participants, a democratic political system depends on -- and has a fundamental duty to provide -- wide access to information on education, health, transportation, the economy, the environment, criminal justice, and other social concerns. Federal statistical agencies are responsible for providing statistics on conditions in a variety of areas.
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Federal statistical agencies usually are in touch with the primary users in their own departments. Considerable energy and initiative are required to open avenues of communication more broadly to other current and potential users, including analysts and policy makers in other federal departments, state and local government agencies, academic researchers, private-sector organizations, organized constituent groups, the media, and Congress.
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. Principle 3: A federal statistical agency must have the trust of those whose information it obtains.
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Principle 4: A federal statistical agency must have a strong position of independence within the government. A statistical agency must be able to provide credible information that may be used to evaluate the program and policies of its own department or the government as a whole.
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Most statistical agencies have such broad authority, limited by budgetary constraints, departmental requirements, OMB review, and congressional mandates. • Authority for selection and promotion of professional, technical, and operational staff.
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Authority to decide the scope and specific content of the data collected or compiled and to make decisions about technical aspects of data collection programs is yet another important element of independence, although such authority can never be without limits. Congress frequently specifies particular data that it wishes to be collected (e.g., data on job openings and labor turnover by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, data on family farms by the Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service)
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The budgetary constraints on statistical agencies and OMB review of data collections are ongoing; other pressures depend, in part at least, on the relations between a statistical agency and those who have supervisory or oversight functions. Agencies need to develop skills in communicating to oversight groups the need for statistical series and credibility in assessing the costs of statistical work.
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. Practice 2: Continual Development of More Useful Data Federal statistical agencies cannot be static.
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Because of the decentralized nature of the federal statistical system, innovation often requires cross-agency collaboration. Innovation also implies a willingness to implement different kinds of data collection efforts to answer different needs.
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Sharing of Microdata Another way to improve data quality and develop new kinds of information is for statistical agencies that collect similar information to share microdata records. For example, the sharing of business data would make it possible to evaluate reporting errors and the completeness of coverage of business firms in different surveys.
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. Historically, because statistical agencies are oriented toward the mission of their particular department, the longitudinal surveys they developed (and cross-sectional data activities as well)
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. Operational Methods It is important for statistical agencies to be innovative in the methods used for data collection, processing, estimation, analysis, and dissemination.
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. Statistical agencies have turned to the Internet as a standard vehicle for data dissemination and are increasingly using it as a means of data collection.
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. Some statistical agencies have developed detailed quality profiles for some of their major series, such as those developed for the American Housing Survey (Chakrabarty, 1996)
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Departments of Agriculture et al., 2002) , individual statistical agencies have developed quality guidelines for their own data collection programs, which are available on the Internet (see Practice 7 and Appendix B)
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. Statistical agencies must be vigilant in their efforts to protect against the increased threats to disclosure from their summary data and microdata products while honoring their obligation to be proactive in seeking ways to provide data to users.
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Agencies that release preliminary estimates must educate the public about differences among preliminary, revised, and final estimates. Practice 5: Cooperation with Data Users Users of federal statistical data span a broad spectrum of interests and needs.
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Practice 6: Fair Treatment of Data Providers Clear policies and effective procedures for protecting data confidentiality, respecting the privacy of respondents, and, more broadly, protecting the rights of human research participants are critical to maintaining the quality and comprehensiveness of the data that federal statistical agencies provide to policy makers and the public. Part of the challenge for statistical agencies is to develop effective means of communicating not only the agency's protection procedures and policies, but also the importance of the data being collected for the public good.
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. To give additional weight and stature to policies that statistical agencies had pursued for decades, OMB issued a Federal Statistical Confidentiality Order on June 27, 1997.
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This dilemma is an important one to federal statistical agencies, and it has stimulated ongoing efforts to develop new statistical and administrative procedures to safeguard confidentiality while permitting more extensive access. An effective federal statistical agency will exercise judgment in determining which of these procedures are best suited to its requirements to serve data users while protecting confidentiality.
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The amount of effort or burden varies considerably from survey to survey, depending on such factors as the complexity of the information that is requested. Statistical agencies should attempt to minimize such effort, to the extent possible, by using concepts and definitions that fit respondents' common understanding; by simplifying questionnaires; by allowing alternative modes of response (e.g., via the Internet)
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84] that "census and survey data collected by the federal statistical agencies are not useful for terrorism prevention.")
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.) Data collections of federal statistical agencies are subject to IRB review within some departments.
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Agencies have the responsibility to manage this conflict by initiating more relevant data series or revising existing series to improve quality while providing information to compare old and new series, such as was done when the BLS revised the treatment of owner-occupied housing in the CPI. To ensure the quality of its data collection programs and reports, an effective statistical agency has mechanisms and processes for obtaining both inside and outside review of such aspects as the soundness of the data collec The data quality guidelines of statistical agencies in other countries are also helpful; for Canada, see http://www.statcan.ca [December 2008]
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(See Appendix B for a description of recent OMB guidelines for peer review of scientific information; reviews at a program or agency-wide level are considered under Practice 10.) Practice 8: An Active Research Program Substantive Research and Analysis A statistical agency should include staff with responsibility for conducting objective substantive analyses of the data that the agency compiles, such as analyses that assess trends over time or compare population groups: • Agency analysts are in a position to understand the need for and purposes of the data from a survey or other data collection program and know how the statistics will be used.
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Several federal statistical agencies sponsor research using academic principles of cognitive psychology to improve the design of questionnaires, the clarity of data presentation, and the ease of use of electronic data collection and dissemination tools such as the Internet. The history of the statistical agencies has shown repeatedly that methodological and operations research can lead to large productivity gains in statistical activities at relatively low cost.
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. Practice 9: Professional Advancement of Staff An effective federal statistical agency has personnel policies that encourage the development and retention of a strong professional staff who are committed to the highest standards of quality work.
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However, outsourcing can also have costs, including that agency staff become primarily contract managers 8Only the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau maintain their own inter viewing staff.
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Statistical agencies should also maintain and develop staff with the expertise necessary for effective management of contractor resources. An effective statistical agency has policies and practices to instill the highest possible commitment to professional ethics among its staff, as well as procedures for monitoring contractor compliance with ethical standards.
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. Research on methods to improve data quality may cover such areas as alternative methods for imputing values for missing data and alternative question designs, using cognitive methods, to reduce respondent reporting errors.
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Statistical agencies commonly find that it is difficult to discontinue or scale back a particular data series, even when it has largely outlived its usefulness relative to other series, because of objections by users who have become accustomed to it. In the face of limited resources, however, discontinuing a series is preferable to across-the-board cuts in all programs that reduce the accuracy and usefulness of the more relevant and less relevant data series alike.
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federal statistical system consists of many agencies in different departments, each with its own mission. Nonetheless, statistical agencies do not and should not conduct their activities in isolation.
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The 1995 reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act created a statutory basis for the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP) , formalizing an arrangement whereby statistical agency heads participated with OMB in activities to coordinate federal statistical programs (see Appendixes A and B)
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In other cases, federal statistical agencies engage in cooperative data collection with state counterparts to let one collection system satisfy the needs of both. A number of such joint systems have been developed, notably by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Center for Health Statistics.
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The former was established in the mid-1980s by the National Institute on Aging, in cooperation with the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau. The forum's goals include coordinating the development and use of statistical data bases among federal agencies, identifying information gaps and data inconsistencies, and encouraging cross-national research and data collection for the aging population.
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No single agency, whether a statistical or program agency, could have produced the forum reports alone. Working together in this way, federal statistical agencies contribute to presenting data in a form that is more relevant to policy concerns and to a stronger statistical system overall.
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