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OMB Calls for Comments on Proposed New Policy Directive on Fundamental Responsibilities of Federal Statistical Agencies

  

[7/10/14 update: The ASA Submitted its comments July 9. Read the letter here.
11/26/14: Statistical Policy Directive #1 is signed, per an email from U.S. Chief Statistician, Katherine Wallman. See the Memorandum for the Heads of Selected Executive Departments. This will soon appear in the Federal Register Notice (12/2/14) and at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg_statpolicy (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-12-02/pdf/2014-28326.pdf).
1/8/14: See also this Amstat News article from January 2015, White House Issues Policy Directive Bolstering Federal Statistical Agencies.]

In a May 21 Federal Register notice, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) solicits comments on a proposed new Statistical Policy Directive affirming "the fundamental responsibilities of Federal statistical agencies and recognized statistical units in the design, collection, processing, editing, compilation, analysis, release, and dissemination of statistical information." Comments are due July 21 and the ASA will be strongly supporting the proposed directive.

The proposed directive, which makes up two of the notice's five pages, delineates four responsibilities of federal statistical agencies and units to "provide a framework that supports Federal statistical policy and serves as a foundation for Federal statistical activities, promoting trust among statistical agencies, data providers, and data users." The four responsibilities are  

  1. Produce and disseminate relevant and timely information.
  2. Conduct credible and accurate statistical activities.
  3. Conduct objective statistical activities.
  4. Protect the trust of information providers by ensuring the confidentiality of their responses.

The first page of the Notice summarizes succinctly the importance of the federal statistical system and protecting public trust in it. The summary, for example, states, "To operate efficiently and effectively, the Nation relies on the flow of objective, credible statistics to support the decisions of governments, businesses, individuals, households, and other organizations. Any loss of trust in the accuracy, objectivity, or integrity of the Federal statistical system and its products causes uncertainty about the validity of measures the Nation uses to monitor and assess its performance, progress, and needs by undermining the public’s confidence in the information released by the Government." 

The second and third pages of the Federal Register Notice provide an excellent overview of numerous policies (legislative actions and executive orders) currently in place to "to maintain public confidence in the relevance, accuracy, objectivity, and integrity of Federal statistics", including:

  1. Paper Work Reduction Act
  2. Title V of the E-Government Act of 2002, and OMB's accompanying Implementation Guide
  3. The Privacy Act of 174 and the Privacy Act Implementation, Guidelines and Responsibilities
  4. OMB’s Circular A–130
  5. OMB Government-wide Information Quality Guidelines
  6. OMB’s Directive on Standards and Guidelines for Statistical Surveys
  7. OMB's Statistical Policy Directive No. 3, Compilation, Release, and Evaluation of Principal Federal Economic
    Indicators
  8. OMB's Statistical Policy Directive No. 4, Release and Dissemination of Statistical Products Produced by Federal Statistical Agencies
  9. The President’s Memorandum on the Preservation and Promotion of Scientific Integrity.

The Federal notice also summarizes the guidance provided by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in its document, Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency (the fourth and fifth editions of which the ASA Board has endorsed), the European Statistics Code of Practice, and the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.

The propose directive would apply to the 13 ICSP Statistical Agencies (BEA, BJS, BLS, BTS, Census, EIA, ERS, NASS, NCES, NCHS, NSF NCSES, SSA ORES, and IRS SOI), the Federal Reserve Board's Microeconomic Surveys Unit, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (Department of Health and Human Services), the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's National Animal Health Monitoring System (Department of Agriculture), and "Federal statistical agencies and statistical units newly recognized after the issuance of this Directive."

In her message to the federal statistical community announcing the directive, U.S. Chief Statistician Katherine Wallman said the "Directive affirms the fundamental responsibilities of Federal statistical agencies and recognized statistical units in the design, collection, processing, editing, compilation, analysis, release, and dissemination of statistical information... [and] is intended to provide a unified, concise framework for governance of official statistics."

To see the COPAFS comments on the directive, click here. AERA's comments are here.

For more on ASA's support of the federal statistical system, please see this ASA webpage, Support of Federal Statistical System.

​See other ASA Science Policy blog entries. For ASA science policy updates, follow @ASA_SciPol on Twitter.  

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