This blog entry will help track the leaders of the 13 ICSP statistical agency heads by listing in Table 1 the current head, the previous head, and links to Amstat News Q&A's. I will also track updates as I learn of them. Table 2 lists the nature of the head position.
Latest Updates:
Table 1: Current and Previous Statistical Agency Heads, with hyperlinks to Amstat News Q&A's. See agency abbreviations below.
Table 1.1: The 2019 Evidence Act expanded ICSP by about a factor of two. We've started Amstat News Q&A's with the new statistics officials.
For the following table on the nature of the agency head position, PASC stands for Presidential Appointee, Senate Confirmed and CSESA is Career senior executive service appointee.
Table 2: Nature of leadership positions of federal statistical agencies. Source: Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency, National Academies.
| |
Agency |
Nature of Head Position |
| |
BEA |
Director, CSESA |
| |
BJS |
Director, Presidential appointee* |
| |
BLS |
Commissioner, PASC, fixed 4-year term from date of swearing in |
| |
BTS |
Director, CSESA† |
| |
Census |
Director, PASC, fixed 5-year term starting and ending in years ending in 2 and 7. |
| |
EIA |
Administrator, PASC |
| |
ERS |
Administrator, CSESA |
| |
NASS |
Administrator, CSESA |
| |
NCES |
Commissioner, Presidential appointee*, fixed 6-year term next ending in June of 2021, 2027, etc. |
| |
NCHS |
Director, CSESA |
| |
NCSES |
Director, CSESA |
| |
ORES |
Associate Commissioner, CSESA |
| |
SOI |
Director, CSESA |
*Congress removed Senate confirmation in 2012. See this 8/1/12 ASA Community blog entry, House Approves Senate Bill Making Census Directorship Fixed Term, Removes Senate Confirmation for BJS & NCES Heads, and links therein.
†Prior to 2004, BTS Director was a presidential appointee
For more on the organization and structure of the Federal Statistical System, see Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency, For example, Appendix 2 has two figures on the organization of the principal federal statistical agencies and programs and their organizational location within their department.
See also this ASA webpage, Support of Federal Statistical System. EPA Chief Statistician Barry Nussbaum also did this February 2012 Q&A for Amstat News.
See other ASA Science Policy blog entries. For ASA science policy updates, follow @ASA_SciPol on Twitter.
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Statistical Agency abbreviations (ICSP is the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy)
BEA Bureau of Economic Analysis
BJS Bureau of Justice Statistics
BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics
BTS Bureau of Transportation Statistics
ERS Economic Research Service
EIA Energy Information Administration
NASS National Agricultural Statistics Service
NCES National Center for Education Statistics
NCHS National Center for Health Statistics
NCSES National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, NSF
ORES Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, SSA
SOI Statistics of Income Division, IRS