The Secretary of Agriculture announced on Thursday, August 9 that the Economic Research Service will undergo several significant changes in the coming year.

APDU wants to point out to our readers pending requests for comments from two groups of particular importance. We know our readers are all busy professionals, but we urge you to take the time to read, think about , and respond to at least one of these requests. UPDATE: The Department of Commerce is requesting  Phase 2 comments on the Federal Data Strategy.

Imagine a website that brought together data from 35 public data sources with 600 measures of child health and well-being: This website exists, at Kidsdata.org. Join us in Arlington, Va. July 17th & 18th, 2018 at APDU’s annual conference to learn more about navigating the public data around us by learning how Kidsdata.org was pulled together and how it has been used to inform decision making around children’s issues in the state of California.

The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) is pleased to announce the 2018 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.

We are inviting proposals to present at the 2018 APDU Annual Conference on any topic relating to public data, whether based on a particular project, data practice, or formal paper. In keeping with the theme of the conference, our interest is in the ways that changes in public data, research techniques, and other advances will impact the way decisions are made in both the public and private sectors.

The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) continues to recognize those who demonstrate the impact data visualizations can have on our discourse. For the second year, APDU is proud to recognize the country’s top data visualizations that leverage our nation’s wealth of publicly-available data to convey a compelling point or story. The 2017 Annual APDU Conference will also host a panel on “Innovations in Data Visualization”, featuring best practices and applications, and examples of how experts have used visualizations to improve their programs, solve critical issues, and powerfully convey meaningful information. We hope you will join us in Arlington, VA, September 13th and 14th, for our ongoing discussion of Communicating Data in an otherwise noisy world.

The 2017 APDU Data Viz Awards winners have been selected by the APDU nominating committee.