Innovations in Federal Statistics Combining Data Sources While Protecting Privacy (2017) / Chapter Skim
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3 Using Government Administrative and Other Data for Federal Statistics
3 Using Government Administrative and Other Data for Federal Statistics
Pages 31-54
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From page 31... ...
OMB and the federal statistical agencies have engaged in a number of efforts in recent years to facilitate greater use of administrative records for statistical purposes, with the goal of improving federal statistics and facilitating program evaluation. Statistical purposes are defined as "the description, estimation, or analysis of the characteristics of groups, without 31
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From page 32... ...
Several initiatives to improve evidence-based policy making have emphasized the importance of reusing existing government administrative data. These initiatives have included proposals to provide greater access to specific administrative datasets, such as the National Directory of New Hires, as well as to expand infrastructure at the Census Bureau so that it can acquire and process more administrative datasets, expand and improve the process for linking data, and provide access to datasets at the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (discussed in Chapter 5)
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From page 33... ...
Some operational data have strictures for the purpose of keeping them secure and accurate for operational uses, so that accessing and using them for statistical purposes can be more difficult than for other administrative records: see Box 3-1. Administrative data can be used in various ways for statistical purposes, such as: 1.
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4. For direct tabulation of administrative records information, such as the number of beneficiaries of a program or the average benefit.
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Sample survey data are mainly used to provide the vital information not available in administrative sources. Other European countries rely less than the Nordic countries on administrative records, but still far more than does the United States.
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, federal statistical agencies have more recently been extending these efforts and exploring ways to combine administrative record data with sample survey data and integrate them as part of their regular statistical estimation. In some situations, administrative records could replace surveys; in others, they could be used in combination with surveys to provide more timely, accurate, and detailed information at lower cost.
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From page 37... ...
, asks respondents about type of housing, ownership status, mortgage payments, current market value of housing unit, annual real estate tax payments, eligibility for assisted housing, remodeling and repair frequency, and other characteristics of the housing unit, neighborhood, and occupants. A HUD pilot program with the Census Bureau matches the sur vey respondents with local tax assessment data to research and evaluate the usefulness of the information for the AHS.
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From page 38... ...
NCHS is able to use these data to provide more frequent and more geographically detailed publications of the characteristics of these providers and service users than were possible with the previous sample surveys. Surveys are conducted for other sectors of long-term care, includ ing adult day care and assisted living, where there are no compre hensive nationally representative administrative data.5 CONCLUSION 3-1 Administrative records have demonstrated potential to enhance the quality, scope, and cost-efficiency of sta tistical products.
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From page 39... ...
For example, the NDNH, which consists of person-level wage records compiled from all 50 states and the District of Columbia (based on quarterly unemployment insurance records) , is not accessible to any federal statistical agency because the authorizing legislation for it specifies the agencies and the permitted uses of these data.7 6 The narrow interpretation of the Census Bureau's usage in all of the MOUs arose from political influences on state labor market information offices regarding the consequences of state-by-state comparisons on the current state government.
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From page 40... ...
For another example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is able to obtain access to administrative data from 8 The President's budget for fiscal 2017 proposes to expand access to the NDNH to specified federal statistical agencies, units, and evaluation offices or their designees for statistical, research, evaluation, and performance measurement purposes associated with assessing positive labor market outcomes.
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From page 41... ...
. The required change to the IRS legislation that would permit BLS to have access to limited business tax information has not been passed, despite numerous efforts.11 CONCLUSION 3-3 There is currently no agency charged directly by statute with facilitating coordination of access to and use of multiple data sources among federal agencies for the benefit of the entire federal statistical system.
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From page 42... ...
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATIVE DATA FOR FEDERAL STATISTICS In the United States, much administrative data relevant to national problems and issues are collected and owned by states and localities. When these data are used for statistical purposes, federal statistical agencies aggregate them to produce national estimates.
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Virgin Islands have joined the LED Partnership. Federal statistical agencies routinely request administrative record data from states and localities, but state and local agencies are usually under no legal obligation to provide them given the country's constitutional guarantees of the independence of these subnational units of government.
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State departments of education are awarded grants to integrate state administrative records on student achievement and ultimately share these data with the federal Department of Education. These grants pay for
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The unemployment insurance data from the states are linked with other states and census data to provide a picture of local labor markets that is much more complete than that which the states could do on their own, such as being able to track graduates of state colleges and universities when they move to different states to find jobs. A similar incentive structure is offered by the Center for the Administrative Records Research and Analysis (CARRA)
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From page 46... ...
The panel views incentives for state and local authorities not as a simple solution to the issues of obtaining access to their administrative records for statistical purposes, but as a necessary, though not sufficient, condition to improve federal statistical agency access to those records. 16 For an examination of errors associated with the use of PIKs, see Abowd and Vilhuber (2005)
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From page 47... ...
CONCLUSION 3-6 Federal statistical agencies could benefit by sharing their experiences exchanging administrative records with states and localities. This could be done through a forum or inter agency working group in which they could seek common solutions and identify incentives for states and local governments to provide access to their administrative data.
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From page 48... ...
In addition to those considerations, statistical agencies also need to ensure that the general public appreciates and understands the benefits of using administrative data for federal statistics and that there is broad public approval of this use. Following the Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency (National Research Council, 2013b)
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. As with administrative records, these other data are not created with the primary intention of statistical use, yet they may provide valuable information for official statistics.
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further processing and analysis Government • Decennial Census • Federal records • Weather sensors • Web-scraped • Traffic videos Examples of Population and o Income tax • Traffic sensors quantitative data • Satellite images Housing o Social Security • Water quality • Web logs • Blogs and • Economic Census o Unemployment sensors comments • Agriculture Census o Medical records • Input in free • Federal statistical • State records text fields surveys o SNAP data o ACS • Police accident o CPS reports o NHIS • County records o AHS • Other jurisdictions' o NCVS data
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2. Use information from administrative records or other sources to improve the design of probability surveys or the accuracy of esti mates computed from them.
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The Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program uses statistical models to combine information from the American Com munity Survey (ACS) with information from administrative records (see Box 3-3)
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When the ACS sample size in the county is small, the estimated number of people under age 18 in poverty relies almost entirely on the prediction from the other data sources. This type of modeling, called small-area estimation, is used throughout the federal statistical system.
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A framework is needed to identify the error structure of each source and assess the util ity of combining different data sources given their strengths and weaknesses. In our second report we will discuss in greater detail an error framework for estimates based on combining multiple data sources, as well as the potential implementation of these methods in ongoing production systems of federal statistical agencies.
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