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SCOTUS Ruling: A Blow to Data-Driven Health-Care Policy
The Supreme Court?s recent decision in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company delivered a blow against states? efforts to develop data-driven health-care policy. The Court struck down a Vermont law requiring health insurers to report data relating to ?health-care costs, prices, quality, utilization or resources required? to the state, ruling that such state-mandated reporting requirements are preempted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). As a result, Vermont and the 17 other states with similar laws will no longer be able to require health insurers to report this data directly to them.
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Government’s Data-Driven Frenemies
Historically, there’s been an unfortunate and unproductive divide between people who have the same goal of getting government to make more informed and data-driven decisions. On one side, there are those tasked with measuring performance. On the other are program evaluators.
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Sunshine Weeks Sheds Light on Open Data Opportunities
From March 13 to March 19, the government transparency community in the United States celebrated the 16th annual Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative to promote freedom of information and raise awareness about the importance of open government. In Washington, D.C., and around the country, civil society groups, news media, policymakers, universities, and other groups hosted events devoted to increasing government transparency.
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Can Big Data Help Measure Inflation?
In the last decade, the government has had a harder time measuring CPI. Their method is usually to go around from store to store, taking stock of prices around the country. But e-commerce now accounts for around 7 percent of U.S. GDP, which means online spending is an important component of the CPI. Data shared by retailers and compiled by the technology firm Adobe might help close this gap.
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San Jose, Calif., Uses Data to Reduce Traffic Fatalities
San Jos?, Calif., joined a growing list of US cities implementing a Vision Zero initiative, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities to zero through education, enforcement and engineering. The city?s Transportation Department is using analytics and GIS to determine where a significant share of fatal and major injury collisions occur.
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New & Updated Data Sources
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Tool Helps Exporters Calculate Tariff Benefits Under TPP
With the launch of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) Tariff Tool in 2011, the International Trade Administration (ITA) created a free, online mechanism to enable U.S. businesses to quickly and easily calculate the tariff benefits on their exports to U.S. free trade agreement partner countries. ITA has now expanded that tool to include the latest tariff information for the 11 countries that recently signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
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Visualization of the Week
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Mapping the Story of Government Transparency
The City Accelerator, a partnership between Living Cities, the Citi Foundation and Governing, teamed with Esri to bring the power of data visualization to five cities? compelling stories about the need to take an innovative approach to infrastructure finance and capital improvement planning. In launching the previous two cohorts, the City Accelerator required semi-finalists to produce a short video appeal describing why their city should be chosen to participate in the 18-month cohort. For the third cohort, the opportunity was ripe to leverage the power of storytelling and mapping. So we introduced the tool to the applicant team members, many of whom don?t fit the mold of the traditional ArcGIS user in city government.
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Notable Data Publications
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GOVERNMENT
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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Census Bureau
- Address Canvassing Test (May 23, 2016)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Birth Defects Study To Evaluate Pregnancy exposureS (BD-STEPS) (May 16, 2016)
Department of Education
- National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012 Phase II (April 21, 2016)
Office of the Secretary, HHS
- HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules, and Supporting Regulations Contained in 45 CFR parts 160 and 164 (May 16, 2016)
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