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FACT SHEET: The Opportunity Project
The White House has announced the expansion of the Opportunity Project and the launch of twenty-nine new digital tools built by companies and non-profit organizations to increase access to opportunity in communities across the country. The President launched the Opportunity Project in March 2016 to catalyze the creation of new digital tools that use federal and local data to empower communities with information about critical resources, such as affordable housing, quality schools, and jobs.
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POLL: Most Americans Think BLS is BS
In September, Donald Trump called the five percent unemployment rate “one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.” A majority of Americans may agree with him. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is entirely insulated from political influence of any kind. But a new poll, conducted for POLITICO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, finds that just 34 percent of Americans are confident that the Labor Department’s stated unemployment rate of 4.9 percent is correct.
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Retirement of Easy Stats
The Easy Stats application was retired on Friday, September 30th as the U.S. Census Bureau streamlines and improves its web applications for data access. While no other data tool presents tables exactly like Easy Stats, the same data are available in American FactFinder. If you have feedback on the retirement of Easy Stats, you can submit your comments online.
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Unleashing Patent Data to the Public
Through its Open Data and Mobility program, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is revolutionizing how it delivers data, tells stories, promotes transparency, and empowers data-driven decision making. At the White House Open Data Innovation Summit, Thomas A. Beach showcased exciting ways the agency is building ?data storytelling? through visualizations, like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Hackathon, the USPTO Cancer Moonshot Challenge, and the USPTO Developer Hub online community.
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Beware of the Gaps in Big Data
As we entrust more of our lives to big data analytics, automation problems like this could become increasingly common, with their errors difficult to spot after the fact. Systems that ?feel like they work? are where the trouble starts.
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Geospatial Data On-Demand
There is an expansion in the demand and expectation for geospatial information across industries. This expansion is particularly evident in mass data ? the visual information and models produced by georeferenced imaging and LiDAR. Mass data enables people to answer questions and make decisions about their businesses, assets, and environments. It?s catalyzing demand in both the personal and professional realms.
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New & Updated Data Sources
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EEOC to Collect Summary Pay Data
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that starting March 2018, it will collect summary employee pay data from certain employers. The new data will improve investigations of possible pay discrimination, which remains a contributing factor to persistent wage gaps. The summary pay data will be added to the annual Employer Information Report or EEO-1 report that is coordinated by the EEOC and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). OFCCP collects data from federal contractors and subcontractors.
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Visualization of the Week
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How Transit Built the World?s Prettiest Transit Maps
Transit recently launched Transit Maps, and wrote this blog post about why they took on the mammoth task of creating automatically-generated yet aesthetically-pleasing maps. Transit published a technical follow-up from Anton, their resident mapping wizard, who explains in much greater detail what went into building these maps.
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Notable Data Publications
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GOVERNMENT
HIGHER EDUCATION
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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National Center for Education Statistics
- State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) Survey 2017-2019 (December 6, 2016)
National Center for Health Statistics
- 2018 National Health Interview Survey Questionnaire Redesign (November 7, 2016)
Office of Management and Budget
- Statistical Policy Directive No. 2: Standards and Guidelines for Statistical Surveys (October 12, 2016)
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