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APDU Weekly

 

Features

 

Census Plans 2016 Test Run for New Tech Tools
The Census Bureau has big tech plans for its 2020 count, and it?s organizing a trial run to make sure all goes according to plan. The bureau is rolling out a handful of new options in 2020 designed to upgrade the decennial headcount for the digital age.

 

News

 

8 Cities Cited in Data Program from Bloomberg
Jackson, Mississippi, and Mesa, Arizona, aim to make troves of data about city operations available online for the first time. Tulsa, Oklahoma, plans to make its data releases more useful for the public. Seattle wants to use contract data to help ensure vendors deliver on their promises.

 

The (Hidden) Cost of Open Data
For all of its advantages, cost isn’t always one of them. But there are ways to keep them down.

 

The Next Big Thing in Data Analytics
As the amount of data that governments accumulate grows, so does the need to disaggregate it.

 

New Workforce Data Grants Announced
The U.S. Department of Labor announced the nine recipients of its fifth round of Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI) grants, totaling $9.7 million. The recipients are Arkansas, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, Alaska, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington State.

 

New & Updated Data Sources

 

Big Radius Tool
A new data tool is available in beta form on StatsAmerica.org (a website the IBRC manages for the Economic Development Administration) that may prove useful to you and the economic development organizations in your region. The Big Radius Tool lets you name a city, county or metro area, and specify a radius ranging from 50 to 500 miles. The tool then generates a map of the resulting region, together with lists of the region?s largest cities and counties; its fastest-growing counties; its labor force size, employment and average earnings; and data on its largest industry sectors.

 

GSA Launches Customer Feedback Pilot
State Department and SSA visitors can let the agencies know how their experience was with the touch of a button.

 

Visualization of the Week

 

 

Visualizing What?s Warming the Earth
Eric Roston and Blacki Migliozzi of Bloomberg Business have created a series of data visualizations that illustrate all of the potential contributing factors to Earth?s rising temperatures. The visualization charts the impact of natural factors, such as volcanic activity, alongside human factors, such as deforestation, dating back to 1880. The visualizations clearly demonstrate that natural factors?frequently pointed to by skeptics of manmade climate change?and even some human factors, have a negligible effect, if any, on global temperature averages, and that greenhouse gas emissions are undoubtedly the cause of the temperature increase. Each visualization uses data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which studies changes in the environment.

 

Notable Data Publications

 

GOVERNMENT

NON-PROFITS & FOUNDATIONS

 

Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about?  Just email us and we?ll include it here.

 

Calls for Comment

APDU maintains a list of open calls for comment on proposed federal data collections. We periodically alert APDU members to newly added calls for comment. Over the last several weeks, calls for comment on the following proposed data collections were published in the Federal Register (with due date):

 

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HHS

  • Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Clinician and Group Survey Comparative Database (October 13, 2015)

U.S. Geological Survey

  • National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program (EDMAP and STATEMAP) (September 9, 2015)
  • National Spatial Data Infrastructure Cooperative Agreements Program (NSDI CAP) (October 6, 2015)

August 13, 2015

 

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