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APDU Weekly

Features

 

Q&A With BEA Director Brian C. Moyer
Brian C. Moyer became the director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in September 2014. His top priorities include making sure that BEA remains innovative so they can continue to deliver economic statistics that accurately measure an ever-changing economy in a cost-effective manner, creating new measures that are relevant to businesses, policymakers, and the public, and continuing to improve on disseminating data and making sure it is accessible to sophisticated and casual data hounds alike.

 

News

 

Op-Ed on Education Statistics on The Hill
Congress is moving quickly, with the Senate HELP Committee advancing Strengthening Education through Research Act (SETRA) during the last week of January. Twenty former statistical agency heads are urging Congress to modify SETRA to strengthen the accountability and responsibilities of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in SETRA.

 

Sunlight Foundation Gets US Indexes of Fed Data Released
For the first time, the United States government has agreed to release what may be the largest index of government data in the world.

 

Hack Housing Spurs Innovation Through Open Data
On February 6-8, over 200 software developers, designers and makers gathered at the Zillow headquarters in downtown Seattle for ?Hack Housing?, a hackathon co-hosted by Zillow and the University of Washington. Zillow uses open data from multiple federal agencies including HUD, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Census Bureau, to deliver insights and information on housing, schools, and communities as part of their living database of more than 110 million homes.

 

National Academies: Census Data Not User-Friendly
The bureau should be paying more attention to the needs and opinions of the people and organizations that use its data, according to a recent report.

 

Nominations for Advisory Committee on Ag Statistics
The purpose of the Committee is to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on the scope, timing, content, etc., of the periodic censuses and surveys of agriculture, other related surveys, and the types of information to obtain from respondents concerning agriculture. The Committee also prepares recommendations regarding the content of agriculture reports and presents the views and needs for data of major suppliers and users of agriculture statistics.

 

New & Updated Data Sources

 

CES Vintage Data
Due to user interest in versions of Current Employment Statistics (CES) estimates, CES has compiled vintage data tables that display the CES published employment values for a given reference month across time.

 

Visualization of the Week

 

Visualizing the Ebb and Flow of Jobs
Andrew Van Dam and Renee Lightner of the Wall Street Journal have developed a pair of interactive data visualizations showing the rise and fall of unemployment rates since 1948?the first year with official data. Users can manipulate the visualizations to show the monthly changes in job count and percentage across 20 sectors, as well as overlay timelines of recessions to see how the job market was impacted.

 

Notable Data Publications

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):

 

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HHS

  • Medical Expenditure Panel Survey?Insurance Component (April 20, 2015)            

Bureau of Labor Statistics

  • Occupational Requirements Survey  (April 20, 2015)        

Census Bureau

  • Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey (April 13, 2015)    
  • Annual Survey of School System Finances    (April 13, 2015)    
  • 2014-2016 Company Organization Survey (March 13, 2015)    
  • Quarterly Services Survey (April 13, 2015)
  • Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization (April 13, 2015)    

National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA

  • Agricultural Resources Management Survey and Chemical Use Surveys (April 13, 2015)        

Office of Justice Programs, DOJ

  • American Crime Survey (ACS) (March 19, 2015)    
     

February 19, 2015

 

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