Public Data University has announced a number of new webinars over the months of October and November. On October 12, there will be a webinar on the new Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, an effort to increase the availability and use of government data to build evidence and inform program design, while protecting privacy and confidentiality of those data. On November 2, there will be a webinar on the Interagency Working Group on Expanded Measures of Enrollment and Attainment (GEMEnA) and on November 9, a webinar on the under-reporting of young children in federal statistics. Sign up today!
The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP) will hold a public meeting on Key Issues Related to Evaluation. During the meeting, the Commissioners will hear presentations from members of the program evaluation community. Members of the media and public, who plan to attend in person, please RSVP by noon EDT on Wednesday, November 2 to events@cep.gov.
Federal officials are moving ahead with the most important potential changes in two decades in how the government asks Americans about their racial and Hispanic identity. They include combining separate race and Hispanic questions into one and adding a new Middle East-North Africa category.
Simply Statistics announced the launch of a new specialization on Coursera titled Mastering Software Development in R. This is a 5-course sequence developed with Sean Kross and Brooke Anderson.
Department of Commerce is releasing a curated list of some high-value data sets from across Commerce Bureaus. They are asking for broad input to curate a real list of valuable and usable data, both from government experts and others outside the government. Starting this conversation is part of their call to action to developers and data scientist to help with the “last mile” problem ? to build applications and business intelligence tools on top of Commerce APIs to solve specific problems faced by those who are “data poor,” such that they can scale the use of these tools.
Government needs to adopt a share first mentality for departmental data. Its easy exchange should be the default, not the arduous and exceptional result of lengthy administrative and legal battles to pry data from legacy computer systems and siloed departments.
The idea and concept of ?Big Data? has been around for a while now, however it seems there are many people who still believe it is shrouded in mystery. Therefore, SmartData Collective is going to debunk some of the top big data misconceptions.
The Census Bureau announced the preview available of the Bureau?s new data exploration platform. This preview allows users to take an early look at the foundations of dissemination through Census.gov and provide feedback. To provide your feedback via the Web, please send detailed comments to cedsci.feedback@census.gov
In bringing together the first ever map illustrating the nation?s transit system, the Department of Transportation isn?t just making data more accessible ? it?s also aiming to modernize data collection and dissemination for many of the country?s transit agencies. With more than 10,000 routes and 98,000 stops represented, the National Transit Map is already enormous. But Dan Morgan, chief data officer of the department, says it?s not enough.
Universities and drug companies that use human volunteers for research face tough new rules designed to make sure that valuable information from these volunteers is widely available, not only to the volunteers themselves but to scientists trying to advance medical science. The rules currently on the books are confusing and often ignored.
The Ventusky web application has been developed at InMeteo, a Czech meteorological company based in Pilsen, in collaboration with Marek Mojz?k and Martin Prantl. InMeteo focuses on weather prediction and meteorological data visualization. They have a wealth of experience in presenting weather data from their portal, In-počas?, which was founded in 2006 and is now one of the highest-traffic servers in the Czech Republic. They decided to take advantage of their knowledge and experience to create a top-quality application that clearly displays meteorological data from around the world and allows you to monitor weather development for any place on earth.
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):
Bureau of Justice Statistics
National Use-of-Force Data Collection (December 5, 2016)
