REMINDER: Board Voting Closes Tuesday Voting for open seats including At-Large, Secretary, and Treasurer closes on Tuesday, December 15. Make sure your voice is heard and vote today!
No Funding Increase for BTS After several delays and short-term extensions, Congress agreed on a five-year transportation bill covering roads and transit systems. The $300 billion bill determines the budget for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the funding for which comes from the Highway Trust Fund (rather than the annual appropriations bills covering the other primary statistical agencies, which are still waiting to know their FY16 funding levels.)
The Fixing America?s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, H.R. 22, freezes the BTS budget at $26 million for FY16-FY20 despite support expressed in an ASA-organized letter signed by 20 organizations?including AAA, the ASA, the American Trucking Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?for the Administration’s proposal to increase the BTS budget to $29 million. $26 million is the same level of the BTS budget in FY05, which means BTS will see a 30% decline in purchasing power from FY05 to FY20 due to inflation.
News
Using Data and Evidence on Social Problems The stakes for effective government have never been higher, and confidence in government’s ability to move the needle on complex social problems has never been lower. But the best thinkers and practitioners on the cutting edge of good government are using data and evidence relentlessly to understand these problems, target solutions, build in transparency and accountability, and feed continuous improvement. Rather than relying on aggressive policing and incarceration, these tools could help us find better ways help those left behind.
Big Data?s Positive Impact on Underserved Communities When it comes to empowering underserved communities, big data is making a big impact. Until recently, this trend has largely gone unrecognized by policymakers and members of the public alike, but this is slowly changing, as some high-profile individuals have begun highlighting this unique benefit of big data. Most recently, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Terrell McSweeny delivered a keynote address at a Washington, D.C. policy forum sponsored by Google in which she outlined the many ways that the era of big data has enabled the government to be more responsive and effective at addressing the public?s problems, including by better addressing the needs of underserved communities.
Supreme Court Hears All-Payer Claims Database Case In a recent Supreme Court hearing, a health insurer made the case that states do not have the authority to require self-insured plans to supply cost and quality information for their databases–an argument many of the justices seemed to agree with. The case, Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, concerns the legality of Vermont’s all-payer claims database, which requires insurance companies, including self-insured plans, to report to a statewide database.
Industry Q?s Submitted on OMB Tech Policy Memo A-130 The division between the privacy and security approval process for federal IT projects and various rules tied to open data in the revisions to the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-130 have elicited numerous public comments as the extended comment period came to a close recently. The circular, which governs how the federal government uses its IT assets, is undergoing its first revision since 2000. Released to the public in October, the comment period was extended another two weeks after calls from various groups for more time to parse over the additions.
New & Updated Data Sources
Legislation Introduced to Collect Data on Trust in Police A bill being introduced by Democratic lawmakers would collect new data on public trust in law enforcement, allowing federal officials to more proactively suggest policy changes in neighborhoods, cities and states where trust is problematically low — a data collection effort requested specifically by President Obama’s policing task force in early 2015. The legislation, titled the Tracking Reputations Upgrades Societal Trust (TRUST) act, would add new questions specifically focused on trust in law enforcement to be asked during the annual National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Patent Office Launches Int?l Application Tracking Tool The Patent and Trademark Office has debuted a new online tool that it says will help those filing for intellectual property protections abroad. Called Dossier Access, the service allows users to track the status of patents in the world?s five largest patent offices: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, China?s State Intellectual Property Office and the Japan Patent Office.
Visualization of the Week
The Most Beautiful Data Visualizations of 2015 A striking infographic visualizing a general decline in the number of people suffering from infectious diseases across all 50 states and the District of Columbia won Gold for Data Visualization at the annual Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2015 which were announced in London on December 2. Vaccines and Infectious Diseases by Dov Friedman and Tynan Debold at the Wall Street Journal comprises a series of heat maps showing the number of cases per 100,000 people measured over 70 years. Click the link to see seven other incredible data visualizations.
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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):
