Methods to Foster Transparency and Reproducibility of Federal Statistics Proceedings of a Workshop (2019) / Chapter Skim
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3 Benefits and Costs of Transparency: Views from Three Statistical Agencies
3 Benefits and Costs of Transparency: Views from Three Statistical Agencies
Pages 13-24
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From page 13... ...
She noted, for example, that the Panel on Methods for Integrating Multiple Data Sources to Improve Crop Estimates, of which she is a member, is studying forecasts of crop yields at the U.S. Department of Agriculture by looking not only at survey data but also remote sensing data that look at crop progress.
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From page 14... ...
Madans described the major NCHS data collection systems: the ational N Health Interview Survey (NHIS) , the National Health and Nutriion Ex-t amination Survey (NHANES)
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From page 15... ...
Respondents include physicians, hospitals, emergency departments, outpatient departments, and ambulatory surgery centers, who provide records of their activities. The data from the records are not what traditionally are thought of as administrative records, because NCHS abstracts from the records and so there is some modification of the original responses.
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From page 16... ...
An example is the collection of data regarding vitamin D in the NHANES survey. The surveys were showing a population-wide decline in vitamin D, but the change appeared to be due to the tests used.
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From page 17... ...
What are acceptable ways to document data collection processes? Must everything be publicly available even if the user community is small for some data elements?
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From page 18... ...
Regarding statutory requirements, the Information Quality Act of 2001 directed OMB to issue government-wide guidelines that "provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information disseminated by Federal agencies."2 Thompson reminded workshop participants that the resulting OMB guidelines directed federal agencies to establish and issue their own guidelines toward this end. BEA's Information Quality Guidelines were implemented in 2002; they are available on the BEA Website and are updated regularly.3 Thompson noted that in terms of directives and standards, there are OMB Statistical Policy Directives, which identify minimum requirements for federal principal statistical agencies when they engage in statistical activities.
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From page 19... ...
When BEA publishes a number that is different from ones suggested by the forecasts, the agency gets phone calls and e-mails. She noted, however, that although BEA documents what data it is using and the estimation methodology used for its various statistics, the agency does not publish detailed formulas relating source data to final estimates.
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From page 20... ...
First, the agency is revising existing BEA source data and aggregations for origins of residual seasonality. Second, it is modifying the GDP estimation process based on the results of the first-stage review.
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From page 21... ...
The issue of replicability for the U.S. Census Bureau appears in a number of cases in which there may be "house effects" when one is looking at a collection and processing activity that the agency previously contracted out to one organization that was later contracted out to another organization.
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From page 22... ...
There are also opportunity costs for one's most productive employees, he said, and there is a cognitive and operational burden for users, especially if transparent information is not well calibrated with the stakeholder information base. Eltinge offered four suggestions for agencies with respect to increasing transparency and reproducibility for statistical agencies.
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From page 23... ...
VIEWS FROM THREE STATISTICAL AGENCIES 23 ency and reproducibility improvements. He added that it is especially important in terms of big data to consider, in addition to documentation, conducting sensitivity analyses to indicate how much various assumptions matter.
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