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Coordinating America?s Geospatial Data
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators have introduced the Geospatial Data Act to coordinate the federal government?s efforts to collect and manage geospatial data. Many federal agencies collect geospatial data, though despite efforts to promote interagency data sharing, often agencies will perform redundant data collection or expenditures to procure data another agency already owns. The Geospatial Data Act would codify requirements from the Office of Management and Budget for agencies to adopt common standards for geospatial data to promote sharing and reduce redundant collection, and direct the Federal Geographic Data Committee to promote cost-effective data collection and exchange.
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Commerce Chief Shows Flexibility on Census Funding
The Department of Commerce is not spared from the steep cuts requested across civilian agencies in President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2018. The request outlines a $1.4 billion funding decrease across the IT-intensive department. However, at a May 25 House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Secretary Wilbur Ross indicated room for some budgetary flexibility on at least one component: the decennial Census.
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Job Board June 2017
APDU?s June Job Board can now be found on the APDU website. Thank you to all who submitted job postings for this month!
You can submit your job postings to: bbuff@crec.net.
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Overcoming Data Science Skills Gap With Internal University
Airbnb has launched an internal employee training program called Data University to help overcome a shortage of trained data scientists and make its workforce more data literate. Data University offers courses ranging from basic data-science subjects, such as introduction to statistics, to advanced classes like machine learning, to encourage all of its workforce to participate, rather than just engineers. Since Airbnb launched Data University in the second half of 2016, the number of weekly users of its internal data science tools has increased by 15 percent.
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Census Says Some Cities Are Smaller Than Thought. Why?
These are small changes. They?re new for this decade, but not unprecedented. But the story behind the annual estimates the bureau makes between its more reliable decennial population count tells us something interesting about how population is measured, and how crucially important the 2020 Census is to understanding the way America is growing right now.
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Despite What Bankers Say, HMDA Data Is Indispensable
The American Bankers Association (ABA) issued a white paper, ?HMDA?More Really is Less: The Data Fog Frustrates HMDA,? maintaining that the CFPB exceeded its mandate under Dodd-Frank, including adding unnecessary data variables to HMDA that increase regulatory burden for banks and putting consumers at risk for identify theft and predatory marketing. This article disputes that conclusion.
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Germany Passes New Federal Data Protection Act
Germany is one step closer to new data protection rules as the German Parliament and the Federal Council have both approved the draft of a new Federal Data Protection Act (Bundestag printing matter 18/11325). The purpose of the draft is to align German data protection law to the European General Data Protection Regulation (?GDPR?), which became applicable as of May 25, 2018. The new law is intended to replace the existing Federal Data Protection Act with an identically named new act.
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Visualization of the Week
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A Year of Google & Apple Maps
Justin O?Beirne has written a series of articles comparing the cartographic designs of Apple and Google maps. As a follow-up piece, he looks at how both companies have updated their maps over the year.
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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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Federal Rulemaking and Calls for Comment
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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
- National Assessment of Educational Progress 2017-2019 (June 26, 2017)
- School Survey on Crime and Safety 2018 and 2020 (June 29, 2017)
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