The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) is pleased to announce the 2021 Data Viz Awards. We are once again soliciting creative and meaningful graphic designs that use publicly-available data (for example, data from the Census Bureau or Bureau of Labor Statistics) to convey a compelling point or story.
Katherine Wallman, Chief Statistician of the United States 1992-2017, welcomes new Chief Statistician Karin Orvis with a perspective informed by decades of service in this key position.
If the mantra in real estate is “location, location, location,” the mantra for public data users is—or should be: “disaggregation, disaggregation, disaggregation.”
Why does disaggregation matter?
On behalf of the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) Board of Directors and staff, I want to wish you a happy new year! I am looking forward to 2022, which will be my second and final term as APDU President.
Data from the Family Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic questionnaire offer us a glimpse of how California children are faring. A majority of caregivers are concerned about their children’s mental health. Almost two-thirds of California caregivers (65%) were concerned about their oldest child’s emotional or mental well-being during the previous month when asked in July 2021, including 31% who were moderately concerned and 12% who were extremely concerned.
The tables have turned for workers in a post-pandemic recovery based on crunching the latest jobs and labor data in Public Insight Insight for Work. In the spring of 2020, millions of workers were laid off or terminated. In September 2021, quit rates approached a record high level of just under 3% while layoff rates declined below 1%. Thus, we enter the growing phenomenon of “The Great Resignation”.
APDU Board Member and former Chief Statistician of the United States issues a call to action to the data user community. Click through to learn more!
Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund and Terry Ao Minnis, Senior Director of Census and Voting Programs for Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), discussed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in public data at the APDU (Virtual) Annual Conference on Tuesday, July 27. Moderated by Hansi Lo Wang, National Correspondent for NPR, the panelists explored changes to census data collection practices, the relationship between the quality of data and equity, and how NALEO and AAJC can use upcoming Census data to achieve their organization’s goals.
The 2021 APDU Annual Conference closed with a panel of federal statistical agency leaders including Dr. Ron Jarmin, Acting Director and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Census Bureau; Dr. William Beach, Commissioner at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Dr. Mary Bohman, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis; and Dr. Mark Schneider, Director of the Institute of Education Sciences. The panel gathered virtually on July 29, 2021, to discuss the challenges of providing trustworthy, accurate, and timely federal statistical data to the public within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic recovery.
APDU is pleased to announce the winners of this years Data Viz Awards. APDU gives annual awards to creative and meaningful graphic designs that use publicly available data (for example, data from the Census Bureau or Bureau of Labor Statistics) to convey a compelling point or story.
Why attend APDU’s annual conference? You can learn more about publicly available datasets like the two described in this article.
APDU Board Member Beth Jarosz provides a great overview of the Federal Statistical System in this blog post. She discusses how the agencies are interrelated and how many ways there are for data users to keep up on—and sometimes influence—the changes in the data systems we rely on.