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APDU Weekly

Features

 

 

Good news from the Hill: the move to re-introduce an unpopular bill that would affect the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey has failed. Earlier this week, APDU joined a host of organizations criticiing a possibe reintroduction of H.R. 1078, aka the Poe Bill. Read more on the APDU Blog.
 
Yesterday APDU presented “Introduction to Data Sets” with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Listen to an excerpt from the questiona and answer portion of the webinar, about potential cuts to BEA’s statistical programs.

 

News

 

The Department of Commerce released its Strategic Plan five-year plan for fiscal years 2014 to 2018. 
 
In 2013, annual levels for hires, quits, and other separations rose for the fourth consecutive year. The layoffs and discharges annual level decreased in 2013 after holding steady in 2012.
 
The National Science Foundation posted the S&E Indicators State Data Tool, which allows you to compare states on science and engineering measures, such as STEM degrees awarded, the scientific workforce, and state economic impacts of science and engineering.
 
Harvard has once again topped the Times Higher Education’s reputation ranking of worldwide universities, with US  institutions taking almost half of all the places on the top 100 list. 
 
On February 28th, the Obama Administration issued updated guidance for agencies to use as they develop 2014 open government plans. 
 
Cloud computing is revolutionizing the world, bringing huge economies of scope and scale to information capture,  storage, communications and analysis. 

 

New & Updated Data Sources

 

The Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files for the 2012 American Community Survey five-year statistics are now 
available for users to create their own tabulations. 
 
There’s plenty of software available to work with data, but to gain the skills to really get something out of it, that takes 
time and experience. 
 
Statement by Amy Bennet, Assistant Director of OpenTHeGovernment.org 

 

Visualization of the Week

 

 

“Dancing Statistics” is a video series, produced by BPS Media Center in the UK, that urges you to “forget bell curves, jellybeans, and coin flips.” Instead, they use the visual power of dance to demonstrate variance, correlation, and sampling, all through coreographed movements. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

 

Notable Data Publications

 

GOVERNMENT

NON-PROFIT & FOUNDATIONS

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):

March 13, 2014

 

 

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