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Methods to Foster Transparency and Reproducibility of Federal Statistics Proceedings of a Workshop (2019) / Chapter Skim
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7 Summarizing Day 1
Pages 73-80

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
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From page 73...
... Census Bureau, but was actually a page set up by a Bureau employee in public GitHub space. Abowd added that they are trying to establish exactly what the rules are in GitHub, and then the U.S.
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From page 74...
... Census Bureau but there are not nearly enough to go around and their expertise is put into very specific systems, so the system that Sienkiewicz talked about the day before got Vilhuber's expertise and that of two other contractors who understood how to build a metadata database and how to make an early version of a data link work. Abowd added that another piece of this low-hanging fruit is the curation of code bases for confidential data analyses.
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From page 75...
... He is making sure this is not the case for the 2020 Census. Levenstein said the easy changes that she thinks of in terms of what the research community wants (which is true for most of the statistical agencies)
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From page 76...
... Separate from the code that will produce census products and internal code that might analyze or produce working papers within the Bureau, there might be external researchers who use census data. Thus, there may be a way to extend that pipeline, Stodden said.
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From page 77...
... She suggested creating a system of trusted data stewards who can participate in a crowdsourcing effort to improve administrative data. It may be necessary to think about how to build that in because otherwise there is too much data out there to handle within the federal statistical community.
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From page 78...
... Abowd responded that political science journals would not publish papers written in the RDCs. Thompson asked if the need is for certification for publication, or if there really is a problem concerning the veracity of research published using census data.
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From page 79...
... John Eltinge had two very brief comments: some of the earlier discussion advocated having this cost be part of risk management. One way to think about this in a resource constrained environment is to try to spell that out in greater depth and, if documented, it could mean that basic prudent management, as well as Abowd's point code curation and software engineering processes, are all part of customary practice in computer science.
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From page 80...
... A number of business decisions were made to keep that informa­ ion tightly held, which led to t a code universe that was not best practice. Trading off what is best practice from a computer science perspective versus what is best practice from these business decisions that are made in a highly charged political envi­ onment, r is something that can be taken into consideration, even though most current U.S.
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Key Terms

  • code base
  • federal statistical
  • administrative data
  • internal researchers
  • replication studies

  • external researchers
  • census data
  • data analyses
  • analysis code
  • curated code

  • public github
  • abowd responded
  • criminal justice
  • levenstein agreed
  • thompson asked

  • internal resistance
  • external researcher
  • simple binary
  • business database
  • justice archive

  • longitudinal business
  • external project
  • github space
  • big data
  • agency data

  • publication data
  • internal code
  • traditional metadata
  • data coming
  • research published


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