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National Health Interview Survey Questions May Be Cut
The National Center for Health Statistics announced a plan to dramatically overhaul the NHIS and is requesting comments on these changes. This includes a short period for public comment that ends on March 15, 2016.
The most significant proposed change is the elimination of the family questionnaire that collects basic demographic, socioeconomic, health status, disability, and health insurance information about everyone in the sampled household. The revised survey will only collect this information for one sampled adult and one sampled child per household. It is unclear whether the collection of family income and poverty information will also be discontinued.
Removing the measurement of family characteristics from the most important national survey of U.S. health will leave a gap in public health surveillance and population data infrastructure and will harm the state of health knowledge for years to come.
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Job Board March 2016
APDU is back with a new edition of the Job Board. Members are invited to submit job postings at their organization; the Board will also include a collection of public data-related positions (research, projections, etc.) from a variety of Federal, nonprofit, and private sources. You can submit your job postings to Brendan Buff or info@apdu.org.
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Statisticians: It?s Time to Stop Misusing P-Values
How many statisticians does it take to ensure at least a 50 percent chance of a disagreement about p-values? According to a tongue-in-cheek assessment by statistician George Cobb of Mount Holyoke College, the answer is two ? or one. So it?s no surprise that when the American Statistical Association gathered 26 experts to develop a consensus statement on statistical significance and p-values, the discussion quickly became heated.
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Federal Gov’t Has New Policy for Optimizing Data Centers
A new White House policy for optimizing energy-guzzling data centers in the federal government would block agencies from budgeting any money toward new or expanding data centers without approval from the federal chief information officer. The new Data Center Optimization Initiative ?supersedes? a 2010 effort to close down data centers. The policy emphasizes IT optimization in a bid to save more than $1 billion over the next two years, according to a draft of the new policy set published March 2 in the Federal Register.
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Supreme Court Rules Against Health Care Data
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Vermont cannot compel health insurers to hand over data on the amount paid on medical claims, backing Liberty Mutual Insurance Co’s [LBRTLI.UL] contention that federal law prohibited such requirements. The court, in a 6-2 decision, found that a 2005 Vermont data collection law that was aimed at improving the quality of healthcare did not apply to self-funded insurance plans, which are most commonly used by large companies, and ran afoul of the U.S. Employee Retirement Security Act (ERISA).
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New & Updated Data Sources
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Introducing the Opportunity Project
The Opportunity Project is an initiative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that uses Census Bureau data to help cities and local governments use new, curated, open data to account for how they use federal housing dollars. The Opportunity Project’s curated data set is a new way that the federal government is collaborating with local leaders, technologists, non-profits and community members to leverage data to expand access to opportunity and fair housing across the country.
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PolicyMap Presents at Opportunity Project Launch
APDU member PolicyMap is one of a selected group of collaborators invited to present at the White House Opportunity Project launch event. PolicyMap demonstrated their tool at the White House at an event that was expected to bring more than 200 attendees including community leaders, senior administration officials, advocates and technologists.
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Congressional Bill Status in Bulk XML
At the direction of the House Appropriations Committee, and in support of the Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force, GPO, the Library of Congress (LOC), the Clerk of the House, and the Secretary of Senate are making bill statuses in XML format available through the bulk data repository for the 113th and 114th Congresses. The House and the Senate each produce detailed, chamber-specific status steps as chambers and committees record daily legislative business. The Library of Congress aggregates those status steps, adds metadata, then provides access through Congress.gov.
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National Transit Map Initiative
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has launched an initiative to create a National Transit Map, which is a critical missing element in the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. The National Transit Map will display stops, routes, and schedules for all participating transit agencies. DOT is asking transit agencies to voluntarily permit DOT to collect General Transit Feed Specification data from their web sites on a periodic basis, allowing for the incorporation of routing and schedule data into the National Transit Map. With this information, DOT, planning agencies and researchers can identify and address gaps in access to public transportation.
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Visualization of the Week
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The States People Really Want to Move to
When the U.S. economy slowed during the recession, so did one of the major demographic shifts of the last several decades. For a brief respite, the Northeast and Midwest stopped shedding quite so many residents to the burgeoning Sun Belt. That trend, though ? which has big consequences for politics, among other things ? has been picking back up. New Census data shows the trend accelerating back to its pre-recession pace. 2016 APDU Conference keynote speaker Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan had his data visualizations highlighted in this recent Washington Post article.
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Notable Data Publications
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GOVERNMENT
MEDIA
NONPROFITS & FOUNDATIONS
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Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about? Just email us and we?ll include it here.
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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):
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