CBPP: BLS Cuts Impair Policymakers The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities recently explained that House and Senate bills would seriously underfund core Census Bureau activities, potentially weakening the quality of data on which both the private and public sectors rely. In a related matter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also faces a funding shortfall as Congress strives to stay within the sequestration caps on discretionary programs, which are simply too low.
News
Gaps in Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data On the surface, the trends aren?t surprising ? students who enroll in wealthy, elite colleges earn more than those who do not. But the deeper that you delve into the data, the more clear it becomes how perilous the higher education market can be for students making expensive, important choices that don?t always pay off.
How NYC is Mainstreaming Data-Driven Governance Cities around the country are working to make their immense quantities of data more public and actionable. As these initiatives take hold, the success stories of data analytics will, like e-gov, move from the anecdotal to the mainstream. That process is well on its way in New York City, an early leader along with Chicago in using big (and little) data to drive innovation.
Beijing Issues Guidelines on Big Data Promotion The State Council, China’s cabinet, has issued guidelines to boost the development of big data. The action framework for promoting big data, ratified by Premier Li Keqiang, aims to forge a new model for social governance in the coming five to 10 years, highlighting accurate management and multi-dimensional cooperation.
New & Updated Data Sources
NCES Updates State Education Reforms Website New state-level data on compulsory school attendance, prekindergarten enrollment, standards and teacher qualifications, teacher certification requirements, and instructional time are now available on the State Education Reforms website. The State Education Reforms website, which draws primarily on data collected by organizations other than the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), compiles and disseminates data on state-level education reform efforts.
Introducing Census Business Builder Census Business Builder: Small Business Edition combines economic and demographic data in meaningful ways that are useful to the small business owner. Uniquely, Census Business Builder also uses third party data on consumer spending. Register now for the September 30 APDU Public Data University webinar on Census Business Builder through the link in the sidebar.
Updated College Scorecard Released by President In his weekly address, the President announced the launch of a new College Scorecard, meant to help students and parents identify which schools provide the biggest bang for your buck. Designed with input from stakeholders, the Scorecard offers reliable data on factors important to prospective students, such as how much graduates earn, and how much debt they have when they graduate.
Broadband Internet Access Data on PolicyMap You can now see where Americans are unable to access broadband internet, down to the sub-neighborhood level on PolicyMap. Learn about who lacks access to high quality internet and who has limited choice in internet service providers.
Visualization of the Week
Tracking the Movement of Ocean Trash Greg Shirah and Horace Mitchell at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?s (NASA) Scientific Visualization Studio, which creates visualizations to improve the research community?s understanding of NASA?s research, have created a series of time lapse visualizations designed to illustrate how garbage flows throughout the oceans. Shirah and Mitchell first mapped location data from floating research buoys that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been releasing and tracking for the past 35 years. Then, by incorporating thousands of simulated particles and a computational model of ocean currents, the visualizations show how ocean trash eventually migrates to five distinct ?garbage patches? around the world.
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):
Administration for Children and Families
Goal-Oriented Adult Learning in Self-Sufficiency Study (October 16, 2015)
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HHS
Developing a Registry of Registries (November 20, 2015)
Census Bureau
Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Survey (October 16, 2015)
National Center for Education Statistics
Middle Grades Longitudinal Study of 2017-2018 Recruitment for 2017 Operational Field Test (November 16, 2015)
September 24, 2015
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