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APDU Member Survey Reminder
The Association of Public Data Users needs your help! Member input is critical in helping the APDU Board, committees and staff in shaping APDU’s programs and services to meet your needs.
Please take a moment and complete the APDU Membership Survey to help us better understand your needs by end of day Thursday, February 28, 2013.
If you are unsure if you are an APDU Member please contact Spencer Abrams.
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American Community Survey Data Users:
Request for Input on New ACS Data Users Group Activities And Topics
With funding from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and Sabre Systems are forming a new American Community Survey (ACS) Data Users Group. The purpose of the ACS Data Users Group is to improve understanding of the value and utility of ACS data. Membership in the group is free and open to all interested ACS data users. The ACS Data Users Group will not play a role in advising the Census Bureau or advocating to the Census Bureau on behalf of ACS data users. The group is led by a Steering Committee comprised of selected external stakeholders representing a broad spectrum of data users with different interests.
To facilitate communication among ACS data users, PRB and Sabre Systems will create and maintain an online forum, organize webinars and special sessions at professional meetings, and hold an annual ACS Data Users Conference. The online forum is the centerpiece of this project and will provide a discussion site where people can share messages, materials, and announcements related to ACS data and methods. Specific activities and topics will be determined based on input from ACS Data Users Group members, Steering Committee members, and Census Bureau staff.
To collect information about activities and topics of interest to ACS data users, and to start assembling a preliminary list of ACS Data Users Group members, the Steering Committee has created a brief survey questionnaire here. The survey takes about 10-15 minutes to complete. Individual responses will be kept confidential; only the aggregate data will be reported.
Please respond by March 8. If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Mark Mather, Associate Vice President of Domestic Programs at the Population Reference Bureau at or 202-939-5433.
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Letters to Senate Appropriations Committee List Sequestration Impacts for Three Federal Statistical Agencies
In response to a request from Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (MD-D), federal agencies have sent letters to Mikulski on how sequestration would affect them. The letters are posted on the Senate Appropriations Commitee website and contain sequestration impacts for the Census Bureau, BLS and NASS. The other agency letters do not go to a level of detail to include the impacts on other federal statistical agencies (BEA, BJS, BTS, EIA. ERS, NCES, NCHS, NCSES, IRS SOI, SSA ORES). Read the letters here.
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Open Call to Innovators: Apply to present at G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture
In an exciting opportunity, the G-8 is inviting innovators to apply to present ideas that demonstrate how open data can be unleashed to increase food security at the G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture on April 29-30, 2013 in Washington, D.C. The G-8 conference will convene policy makers, thought leaders, food security stakeholders, and data experts to discuss the role of public, agriculturally-relevant data in increasing food security and to build a strategy to spur innovation by making agriculture data more accessible. Read more here.
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Workforce Investment Act of 2013
Top House Education and the Workforce Committee Democrats reintroduced legislation on February 15th to improve the federal workforce development programs so that they better respond to local economic needs and help get workers find a good job or a new career. Enacted in 1998, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) created local workforce investment boards (WIB) made up of community stakeholders who decide on how to respond to local economic needs.
However, supporters of workforce training programs agree that improvements to the current system are needed to make the program work better for those looking for a good job, local communities, businesses and taxpayers. The Workforce Investment Act of 2013 would accomplish this by focusing on finding workers jobs and careers through strategic partnerships with in-demand sector employers, community colleges, labor organizations, and non-profits. Read more here.
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The Big Mac Index Goes Interactive
The Economist has published what it refers to as the Big Mac Index- a comparison of the cost (in a common currency) of a Big Mac in different countries in the world. This index is a good lesson in purchasing-power parity, or, rather, the lack thereof, since the cost of a Big Mac differs considerably by country, even when normalizing for currency. The index also provides a good opportunity to think about real exchange rates and what they represent. Read more here.
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Brush Up on Your Data Skills
Cosma Shalizi (at University of Michigan) has a series of online materials entitled “Advanced Data Analysis from an Elementary Point of View” that can help you brush up on your data skills. Topics range from “Regression: Predicting and Relating Quantitative Features” to “Graphical Causal Models.” Read the online materials here.
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Notable Data Publications
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Each week, the APDU Data Update identifies recent statistical data releases of interest to APDU members.
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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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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Asthma Information Reporting System (April 20, 2013)
Department of Agriculture
- Forest Industries Data Collection System (March 22, 2013)
Federal Aviation Administration
- National Flight Data Center Web Portal (April 16, 2013)
National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Cold Storage Survey (March 18, 2013)
- Fruits, Nuts, and Specialty Crops Surveys (April 15, 2013)
- Honey Survey (April 15, 2013)
- Nursery and Christmas Tree Production Survey and Nursery and Floriculture Chemical Use Survey (April 15, 2013)
National Institutes of Health
- Main Study Design for the National Children’s Study (February 25, 2013)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- Economic Surveys of U.S. Commercial Fisheries (March 12, 2013)
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
- Customer Electricity Data Access and Control Questionnaire (March 18, 2013)
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