Article by Nancy Potok and Erica L. Groshen: “Official government statistics are critical infrastructure for the information age. Reliable, relevant, statistical information helps businesses to invest and flourish; governments at the local, state, and national levels to make critical decisions on policy and public services; and individuals and families to invest in their futures. Yet surrounded by all manner of digitized data, one can still feel inadequately informed. A major driver of this disconnect in the US context is delayed modernization of the federal statistical system. The disconnect will likely worsen in coming months as the administration shrinks statistical agencies’ staffing, terminates programs (notably for health and education statistics), and eliminates unpaid external advisory groups. Amid this upheaval, might the administration’s appetite for disruption be harnessed to modernize federal statistics?
Federal statistics, one of the United States’ premier public goods, differ from privately provided data because they are privacy protected, aggregated to address relevant questions for decision-makers, constructed transparently, and widely available without a subscription. The private sector cannot be expected to adequately supply such statistical infrastructure. Yes, some companies collect and aggregate some economic data, such as credit card purchases and payroll information. But without strong underpinnings of a modern, federal information infrastructure, there would be large gaps in nationally consistent, transparent, trustworthy data. Furthermore, most private providers rely on public statistics for their internal analytics, to improve their products. They are among the many data users asking for more from statistical agencies…(More)”.