Looking back at 2013, which also marked the 1st session of the 113th Congress, the biggest story for ASA science policy was the federal budget. Sequestration resulted in deep cuts for many statistical agencies, NSF, and NIH; the 2014 budgets could lead to even more cuts. In this blog, I'll review this story, look at several other issues that I've been watching, and point to items to watch for in 2014. I hope you'll add your thoughts in the comments section below.
Jump to:
Federal Budgets;
Funding for social, behavioral, and economic research;
American Community Survey and other surveys;
Incentives for Federal Surveys;
NSF Grant Funding Process;
StatsNSF;
Data Synchronization;
Forensic Science;
Other 2013 Developments;
2014 Items to Watch
Federal Budgets
After numerous showdowns, Congress and the President finally resolved the FY13 budget halfway through the fiscal year. For the statistical agencies, NSF, and NIH, the cuts ranged from 2% to 11%. As examples of the impacts, NSF and NIH funded fewer awards than in 2012 and the Census Bureau had to put off important work on the 2020 Census (which is likely to result in increased 2020 costs down the road.) The battles continued into the FY14 budget deliberations with the government shutting down for the first 17 days of the new fiscal year. For more on the budget story, I refer you to these ASA Community Blog entries and
Amstat News pieces (and links therein):
Other Items
As mentioned in my April 30 blog entry, "
New Congress goes after political science research funding, the American Community Survey, other surveys, survey incentives and the peer-reviewed, merit-based grant-funding process," the community had many concerns about actions taken early in this Congress.
Funding for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research
The one concern that had already come to fruition at the writing of that blog entry -- Senator Coburn's (R-OK) successful efforts to cut funding for political science research -- remains the main one. There are no subsequent Congressional actions to report though NSF cancelled its 2013 grant funding cycle for political science research (see, for example, this
Nature article, "
NSF cancels political-science grant cycle") and "
NSF Advise[d] Political Science Applicants to Pay Heed to Senator's Amendment" (from
ScienceInsider).
American Community Survey and Other Surveys
For the American Community Survey, the bills to make the ACS voluntary were not advanced legislatively although most gained cosponsors. Poe's (R-TX) House Bill to make the ACS voluntary, H.R. 1078, now has 47 cosponsors (up from 27 on April 27) but Senator Paul's (R-KY) companion bill remains with three cosponsors. Congressman Duncan's (R-SC) bill to eliminate virtually all Census Bureau work except for the Decennial Census, H.R. 1638, now has 15 cosponsors.
Because it was a
House amendment to an FY12 appropriations bill that eliminated the ACS last year, the community payed close attention to the FY13 appropriations deliberations and thankfully were able to thwart an attempt to make the ACS voluntary. (See
this MRA blog entry for more information.)
As part of the ACS effort, we've been watching closely the data quality issues of Canada's voluntary National Household Survey, which replaced the mandatory Canada census long form in 2011. This ASA Community Blog entry lists many press clippings on this topic:
View Profile Blog This Results on Data Quality for Newly Voluntary Canadian Long-Form Census Coming In.
Incentives for Federal Surveys
As of the first session of this Congress, Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO) has not renewed his efforts of the 112th Congress to prohibit the federal government from offering incentives for filling out its surveys. For more on this, see
this MRA blog entry. For more on the 112th Congress action, see this 7/6/12 blog entry,
House Spending Bill Prohibits Use of Incentives in Some Federal Surveys.
NSF Grant Funding Process
Also reported in the April 30 blog entry was an effort by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee to alter NSF's peer review process. In November, the committee staff released a draft bill to reauthorize NSF (as part of the effort to re-authorize America COMPETES.) For more information, see this Jeffrey Mervis
Science magazine piece, "
Proposed Tweaks to NSF Peer Review Spur Tensions." The scientific community has been vocal in the NSF re-authorization discussion, including
this letter that the ASA signed. This discussion lead
Science magazine to name
Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) Politico of the Year.
StatsNSF
The ASA has been following very closely the work of the StatsNSF, the ad hoc committee charged with making recommendations on how the NSF could better support the statistical sciences. In February in response to calls for comment, ASA President Marie Davidian recommended NSF create a chief statistical scientist. In a
July StatsNSF update to the advisory committee to the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, the ASA recommendation was manifest as a possible StatsNSF recommendation to create an Office of Data Science as a mechanism to coordinate data science across NSF, a move which would be consistent with
NIH's creation of an associate director for data science. StatsNSF is expected to present a final report later this year. For more on this issue, see these blog entries:
While StatsNSF does its work, 2013 ASA President Marie Davidian and ASA staff have made numerous visits to various NSF directorates where ASA has been encouraged to help make the statistical community more aware of funding opportunities at NSF. To this end, ASA Director of Programs Lynn Palmer, with guidance from the ASA Committee on Funded Research, created an ASA Community group called Funding Opportunities. The purpose of the group, which currently has more than 130 members, is to inform members of the group of funding solicitations.
In addition to statisticians being more active in applying for funding and learning the NSF process, the ASA was encouraged to urge its members to serve on review panels, be program officer rotators, and communicate with program officers being submitting an application (especially when applying for non-DMS funding). They also recommended that grant applicants suggest possible reviewers for their grant proposals. They also emphasized that funding at NSF is proposal driven. As an example we heard that 60% of the education funding at NSF goes to engineering education because of all the proposals from the engineering community.
Over the past year, we’ve also been learning more about influencing NSF research funding policy through white papers, a process fully engaged by the computer scientists. My November column is devoted to this issue, Influencing Federal Research Funding Policy—White Papers?, as is this blog entry, Influencing Federal Research Funding Policy through White Papers. It would be great for the statistical science community to, for example, produce white papers on how the statistical science community could advance the administration's Big Data and BRAIN Initiatives.
Data Synchronization
A more recent development is the data synchronization provision in Senator Baucus's (D-MT) discussion draft released in November. As explained in this 2011 Amstat News article, Data Synchronization: Leveraging Existing Business Data to Better Measure the Economy, this provision would be a technical fix to allow the limited sharing of business tax data with BEA and BLS. For more, see this ASA Community blog entry.
Forensic Science
The ASA ad hoc Committee on Forensic Science has been active for several years to improve the science in forensic science. Early in the group's work they more most active with proposed Congressional legislation. Starting in 2012, the committee started focusing its work more with federal agencies that deal with forensic science. This is consistent with neither of the 112th Congress Senate forensic science bills being re-introduced yet in the 113th Congress. On the House side, Science Committee Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) introduce H.R. 3064, which establishes "a national forensic science research program to improve, expand, and coordinate federal research in forensic sciences." The administration has been active in addresses forensic science issues including the creation of the National Commission on Forensic Science (NCFS). ASA nominated three members for the Commission and members are expected to be named soon. For more on ASA Forensic Science activities, see this ASA webpage and links therein. [1/10/14 update: Steve Fienberg named to NCFS.]
Other 2013 Developments
2013 saw new heads for the BLS, U.S. Census Bureau, NCHS, and NCSES and hopefully 2014 will see new heads names for BJS and NCES. See this blog entry to track federal statistical agency heads.
As noted above in the StatsNSF discussion, 2013 also saw the naming of NIH's new associate director for data science, UCSD's Phil Bourne, who will start in March.
This blog entry wouldn't be complete without acknowledging the tremendous success of the International Year of Statistics. This blog entry by ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein sums up well its success. I also think more-than-doubling of undergrad statistical science degrees over the last five years and strong growth of graduate degrees and AP statistics is exciting. This blog entry has links to the two Amstat News articles and several blog entries I've done on the topic: Statistical Science Degree Comparisons (updated through 2012).
2014 Items to Watch
The federal budget will remain a key item to watch in 2014 and the 2nd session of the 113th Congress. With a budget deal now in place, Congress will try to finalize the FY14 budgets while navigating another debt limit extension. As shown in the tables of the FY14 Budget Development blog entries above, the House and Senate values are generally far apart (with the Senate values being higher). The budget deal increases the chances of the final FY14 levels for the federal statistical agencies, NIH and NSF being halfway between the two levels. For more on this topic, see this Science magazine article, "U.S. Budget Deal Offers Researchers Some Sequester Relief," and this Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Budget Breakthrough May Mean Little for Battered Research Agencies." The Obama administration will also be releasing its FY15 budget request this spring at which point Congress will begin its deliberations of the FY15 budget.
[Updates:
In addition to the other items mentioned above, we'll also be watching for possible legislation to enable the Census Bureau to use administrative records. The House and Senate committees with Census oversight, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Oversight and Governmental Affairs committee, will be taking the lead on any such possible legislation.
Finally for 2014, I look forward to
ASA's celebration of its 175th anniversary!
If I've missed any issues that ASA should have watched or should watch going forward, let me know.
See
other ASA Science Policy blog entries. For ASA science policy updates, follow @ASA_SciPol on Twitter. For more on ASA science policy, see
http://amstat.org/policy/.