| Overview Statistics
produced by the federal government serve as a base for research in a broad spectrum
of scientific disciplines. Population and vital statistics are central to the
work of political scientists and demographers; employment, financial, and production
data are essential for economists; and information on education and crime is used
by sociologists and psychologists. Responsibility for the collection, analysis,
and dissemination of federal statistics is spread throughout the departments and
independent agencies of the executive branch; each of some 70 agencies and departmental
units annually spends $500,000 or more on statistical activities. Within this
decentralized system that generates statistical information, a more limited number
of agencies have the creation of statistics as their principal mission. It is
these agencies that are responsible for producing statistics on major economic,
demographic, and social developments and trends that are the focus of discussion
in this chapter. The proposed funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2009 for the
principal statistical agencies provide some increases over the resources appropriated
in FY 2008—but not always. For details of the funding history in FYs 2007 through
2009 please see table 1. The balance of this chapter provides further details
on FY 2009 programs. Bureau of the Census The Bureau of the Census collects,
compiles, and publishes a broad range of statistics on the population and the
economy. Budget authority is provided in two appropriations: one for current programs,
including demographic surveys, international programs and data on construction,
manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, services, foreign trade, and state
and local government finances and employment; and the other for periodic programs,
including the decennial census of population; and the quinquennial economic censuses
and the census of governments. Table
1: Principal Federal Statistical Agencies
(total
direct funding in millions) 
FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009
Actual Estimate Request
Bureau of the Census: Current Programs $196.6 $202.8 $238.7 -Periodic
Programs
696.4 1,027.4 2,365.9 Bureau of Labor Statistics 548.1 544.3 592.8 Bureau of Economic Analysis 75.7 77.5
87.0 Statistics of Income, IRS 37.2 41.3 42.3 National Agricultural Statistics Service 111.0 111.0 114.0 - Census of Agriculture 36.3 52.4 39.5 Economic Research Service, USDA 75.2 77.9 82.1 Energy Information Administration 90.7 95.5 110.6 National
Center for Health Statistics
107.1 113.6 124.7 National
Center for Education Statistics
90.7 95.5 110.6 Bureau of Justice Statistics 34.6 34.8
38.0 Bureau of Transportation Statistics 26.7 27.0 27.0 Science Resources Statistics, NSF 36.0 37.0 40.0 For FY 2009, funding is requested
for the Census Bureau’s ongoing economic and demographic programs and for a re-engineered
2010 Census. For the 2010 Census Program, funding is requested to: (1) conduct
planning, testing, and development activities, including completion of dress rehearsal
operations and assessments, and carry out several major operations for the 2010
Census, including Address Canvassing, while making final preparations for the
remaining operations; (2) update the road network to a more recent vintage that
includes new streets and roads constructed in counties that were aligned very
early in the program; and (3) continue to conduct the American Community Survey
to provide socioeconomic data on an ongoing basis rather than waiting for once-a-decade
censuses, including releasing data for all places with a population of 20,000
or larger. For the Census Bureau’s other economic and demographic programs, funding
is requested to: (1) process returns for the 2007 Economic Census and conduct
more than 100 annual, quarterly, and monthly surveys that provide key national
economic statistics; (2) create Internet and printed reports containing government
counts, employment levels, and finance data for the 2007 Census of Governments;
(3) operate the Survey of Income and Program Participation at the traditional
sample size and incorporate improvements; and (4) maintain the accuracy and relevance
of Current Population Survey data. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) The
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the principal fact-finding agency in the federal
government in the field of labor economics, has a dual mission: to provide general
purpose statistics that support the formulation of economic and social policy
decisions in the business and labor communities, in legislation, and other programs
affecting labor; and to serve the program needs of the Department of Labor and
other federal agencies that use the BLS data and research findings to administer
and evaluate on-going programs, develop legislative proposals, and analyze economic
and social problems. To meet these objectives, BLS collects, processes, analyzes,
and disseminates data on employment and unemployment, projections of economic
growth, the labor force, and employment by industry and occupation, prices and
cost of living, consumer expenditures, wages and employee benefits, occupational
injuries and illnesses, collective bargaining activities, and productivity and
technological change in U.S. industries. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to maintain BLS’ core programs, and to: 1) address
the rising costs of the Current Population Survey (CPS) and avoid a reduction
in the accuracy of CPS estimates both by requesting an additional appropriation
and by reallocating funds within BLS through the elimination of lower-priority
programs, such as the American Time Use Survey, that do not directly support Principal
Federal Economic Indicators; (2) initiate continuous updating of the housing and
geographic area samples in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which will improve
the accuracy and timeliness of the CPI; and (3) modernize the computing systems
for monthly processing of the Producer Price Index and U.S. Import and Export
Price Indexes. Bureau of Economic
Analysis (BEA) The
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) provides a picture of the United States economy through the preparation, development and interpretation
of the economic accounts. These accounts consist of the national income and product
accounts, summarized by the gross domestic product (GDP); the wealth accounts
that show the business and other components of national wealth; the input-output
accounts that trace interrelationships among industrial markets; State and regional
income and product accounts; and the United States balance of payments and associated
international investment accounts. These economic accounts provide key information
on economic growth, regional development, and the nation’s position in the world
economy. These data are vital ingredients in major decisions affecting such areas
as monetary and fiscal policy, social security projections, and business planning
and investment. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue BEA’s core programs, and to: (1) extend
the prototype R&D satellite account, funded by the National Science Foundation
in 2006 and 2007, with annual updates and extensions to BEA’s GDP and other estimates
and eventual full incorporation into the economic accounts; (2) develop a more
accurate measure of the health care sector in GDP and create a supplemental, satellite
account that provides detailed and specific information on the expenditures of
the health care industry and the costs of treating specific diseases; and (3)
ensure the continued improvement of the accuracy and relevance of BEA’s economic
accounts data. Statistics of
Income, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) The
Statistics of Income Division (SOI) program provides for compilation of annual
income, financial, and tax data from samples of tax returns filed by individuals,
corporations, partnerships, sole proprietors and tax-exempt organizations. SOI
also provides periodic data based on other returns, such as those filed by estates,
for estimating the wealth of the living top wealth holders, as well as on various
other tax and information returns and schedules, for producing such estimates
as U.S. investments abroad, foreign investments in the United States, and gains
or losses from sales of capital assets. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue SOI’s core programs, and to: (1) continue
to modernize tax data collection systems, particularly to more efficiently assimilate
into SOI systems data captured from the electronic filing of tax and information
returns; (2) examine means to better mask individual records to minimize the risk
of re-identification in the Individual Public Use cross-section file; (3) undertake
a feasibility study to develop an Individual Public Use panel data file; (4) develop
statistical techniques to identify outliers and edit data in IRS administrative
population files; and (5) modernize and expedite dissemination of data products
and reports on the www.irs.gov/TaxStats website; continue to acquire and install
hardware that will provide the capability to load the SOI population files online
to provide for longitudinal analysis for the individual income tax return SOI
panel files; modify SOI processing to accommodate increased availability of data
from electronically filed business and exempt organization returns. National Agricultural
Statistics Service (NASS) The
U.S. Department of Agriculture published its first crop report in 1863, and further
strengthened this responsibility in 1905 by creating the Crop Reporting Board
(now the Agricultural Statistics Board). The National Agricultural Statistics
Service (NASS) has the responsibility for collecting and publishing current national,
state and county agricultural statistics. NASS collects and reports data on a
wide range of production, inventories, prices paid and received by farmers, costs
of production, farm labor usage and wage rates, agricultural chemical use, and
other agricultural statistics. Beginning in FY 1997, NASS is responsible for the
census of agriculture program, which provides comprehensive data every 5 years
on all aspects of the agricultural economy down to the county level. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue NASS core programs and to: (1) enhance
the quality, precision, and detail of NASS State, regional, and national estimates
to help ensure that they meet customer needs; (2) provide a data series on bio-energy
production and utilization, (3) measure energy production and use on farms through
the Census of Agriculture; (4) reduce the cyclical fluctuations of annual funding
needs for the Census of Agriculture; (5) summarize and publish the 2007 Census
of Agriculture, to be released in February 2009, and (6) begin preparation of
numerous census follow-on studies, including a revamped Farm and Ranch Irrigation
Survey to evaluate current access to reuse water, quantities of water used, and
costs associated with various water delivery systems. Economic Research
Service (ERS) The
Economic Research Service (ERS) is a research-oriented statistical agency that
provides economic and other social science information and analysis related to
the supply, demand and performance of domestic and international food and agricultural
markets; indicators of food and consumer issues; economic and environmental indicators
of agriculture production and resource use; and socio-economic indicators of the
status and performance of the farm sector and the rural economy. For FY 2009,
funding is requested to continue ERS’ core programs, and to: (1) strengthen and
enhance the ERS market analysis and outlook program to provide timely analyses
of global agricultural product markets; and (2) analyze the regional impacts of
bioenergy production and evaluate issues related to transportation networks, feedstock
storage, marketing channels, and shifts in commodity production. (For more on
ERS, see Chapter 10.) Energy Information
Administration (EIA) The
Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects, analyzes, and disseminates information
on energy resources, production, distribution, consumption, technology, and related
international, economic, and financial matters. EIA produces reports with statistical
time series, projections of future energy trends, analyses of topical energy issues,
and supports the energy information requirements of the Department of Energy (DOE)
and other federal agencies. The primary customers of EIA services are public policy
makers in DOE and the Congress. Other customers include other federal agencies,
state and local governments, the energy industry, educational institutions, the
news media, and the public. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue ongoing EIA operations to maintain critical
energy data coverage, analysis, and forecasting, and to: (1) enhance petroleum
and natural gas data reliability and statistical accuracy; (2) complete development
and begin initiating monthly ethanol and biofuels data collections on a national
and regional basis as mandated in Section 1508 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005;
(3) combine the environmental data previously collected by the Steam-Electric
Plant Operation and Design Report into two existing electric power surveys; (4)
resume development and testing of the next generation National Energy Model to
replace the existing National Energy Modeling System; and (5) enhance EIA’s global
oil, gas, and coal analysis and forecasting capabilities; (6) enhance cybersecurity. National Center for Health Statistics
(NCHS) The
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) monitors the Nation’s health
and use of health services and explores the relationship between risk factors
and disease. Data sources include the Nation’s vital statistics system and surveys
involving personal interviews, physical examinations and laboratory testing, and
information from health care providers. The mission of NCHS is to provide statistical
information that will guide actions and policies to improve the health of the
American people. Data from NCHS include the use of hospitals, nursing homes, physician
services, financial and non-financial barriers to health care access; the health
of racial and ethnic population groups; infant mortality, access to prenatal care;
death from diseases such as cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS; health insurance
coverage, immunization status, and other measures used to help design and monitor
the impact of programs and policies that affect health and the health care system. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue data collection, analysis, and dissemination
activities for key national health data systems, including the National Vital
Statistics System, National Health Interview Survey, National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey (NHANES), and National Health Care Survey; and to: (1) further
gains in timeliness by implementing systems improvements in data collection and
processing; (2) work on the creation and use of new data access tools and tutorials
to ensure data are available in easily accessible forms; (3) use birth and death
data from the States for tracking priority health initiatives in prevention, cancer
control, out of wedlock births, and teenage pregnancy; (4) transition from International
Classification of Diseases (ICD) 9-CM to ICD-10-CM code sets to improve comparability
between mortality and morbidity data in the U.S. and internationally; (5) ensure
availability of NHANES data on diet and nutrition, blood pressure, and other health
indicators; and (6) allow the National Health Interview Survey to return to its
designed sample of 100,000, permitting estimates for smaller populations to be
published. National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) The
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collects, analyzes and
reports statistics on education in the United States, and conducts studies on comparisons of international
education statistics. NCES also provides leadership in developing and promoting
the use of standardized terminology and definitions for the collection of education
statistics. In
FY 2009, funding is requested to continue NCES’ core programs and to: (1) conduct
in 2009 the National Assessment of Educational Progress, including voluntary 12th
grade reading and mathematics assessments; (2) conduct a new high school longitudinal
study that will begin with a cohort of 9th graders in 2009 and follow them through
postsecondary education and into the workforce; (3) conduct surveys and analyze
data from international studies such as the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study and the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment
and plan for new international assessments; (4) analyze data from the 2007–08
Schools and Staffing Survey and collect data for the Teacher Follow-up Study;
and (5) conduct the Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Survey, which
provides information on the progress of postsecondary students. (For more on NCES,
see Chapter 19.) Bureau of Justice
Statistics (BJS) The
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is responsible for the collection, analysis,
and publication of statistical information on crime, criminal offenders, victims
of crime, and the operations of justice systems at all levels of government and
internationally. The mission of the Bureau is to provide accurate and timely justice
data and to support the emerging capacity of State and local governments in the
use of these data for their justice programs. For
FY 2009, funding is requested for the maintenance of BJS’ core statistical programs,
including: (1) criminal victimization statistics; (2) cyber crime data on the
incidence, magnitude, and consequences of electronic and computer crime to households
and businesses; (3) law enforcement data from over 3,000 agencies on the organization
and administration of police and sheriffs’ departments; (4) nationally representative
prosecution data on resources, policies, and practices of local prosecutors; (5)
court and sentencing statistics, including Federal and State case processing data;
and (6) data on correctional populations and facilities from Federal, State, and
local governments. Funds will also be used to support the implementation of a
redesign to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Transportation
Statistics (BTS) The
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) legislative mandate covers: 1) The Intermodal
Transportation Database; 2) The National Transportation Atlas Database; 3) The
National Ferry Database; 4) The National Transportation Library; 5) The Transportation
Statistics Annual Report; 6) Statistical guidelines, standards, and research;
7) The Advisory Council on Transportation Statistics; and 8) An information needs
study by the National Research Council (due in 2007). BTS is now within the Research
and Innovation Technology Administration. For
FY 2009, funding is requested to develop measures of congestion and for the maintenance
of BTS’ core statistical programs, including: (1) production of data products
from the 2007 Commodity Flow Survey, a major national benchmark survey of shippers;
(2) release of monthly statistics on the commodities and mode of transportation
used in trading with the United States’ largest partners; (3) production of a
core set of economic data and indicators including the Transportation Services
Index, multi-factor productivity measures, the State Transit Expenditure Survey,
and the Air Travel Price Index; (4) release of the National Transportation Atlas
Data Base, a compendium of national geo-spatial transportation data; and (5) dissemination
of the Transportation Statistics Annual Report and other key publications on the
national transportation system. Sciences Resource
Statistics, National Science Foundation The
legislative mandate for Science Resource Statistics (SRS), as stated in the National
Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended, is, “…to provide a central clearinghouse
for the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data on scientific and engineering
resources and to provide a source of information for policy formulation by other
agencies of the federal government….” To meet this mandate, SRS provides policymakers,
researchers and other decision makers with high quality data and analysis for
making informed decisions about the nation’s science, engineering, and technology
enterprise. The work of SRS involves survey development, data collection, analysis,
information compilation, dissemination, and customer service to meet the statistical
demands of a diverse user community, as well as preparation of the biennial reports
Science and Engineering Indicators and Women and Minorities and Persons
with Disabilities in Science and Engineering. In
FY 2009 SRS will continue research and methodological activities to improve the
relevance and quality of data collected on the conduct of research and development
(R&D). In early 2009, SRS will launch a full-scale pilot of the redesigned
survey of R&D conducted in the for-profit sector, the survey being renamed
from the Survey of Industrial Research and Development to the Business Research
and Development Survey. Redesign activities underway for the Survey of Academic
R&D, begun in FY07, will involve pretesting a significantly redesigned survey.
In addition, SRS will explore ways in which data on innovation could be gathered,
such as through modules on existing surveys or a small scale focused survey, as
well as gathering data on R&D conducted/funded by non-profit organizations.
Funding
is requested in FY 2009 for SRS’s participation in the NSF initiative, the Science
of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP), which will develop the data, tools,
and knowledge needed to develop a new science of science policy. SRS’ contribution
to this initiative and the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI)/America Competes
Act is to enhance the comparability, scope and availability of data on the science
and engineering enterprise. SRS
worked closely with the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget
to develop and test a field of degree (FOD) item for addition to the American
Community Survey (ACS). The Census Bureau tested and evaluated two versions of
a FOD item in FY 2007 and FY 2008. The outcome of the test was successful and
in FY 2008 SRS/Census will request that OMB approve addition of an open-ended
FOD item to the ACS beginning in 2009. Other
improvement activities in FY 2009 will include continuing activities related to
the redesign of the Survey of Graduate Students and Post-doctorates in Science
and Engineering (GSS). In FY09 efforts will continue to redesign the survey, and
evaluate the results of implementing the first phase of a GSS redesign in FY08.
SRS will continue activities examining the present taxonomies for describing fields
of study/research in science and engineering. Of major concern are developing
crosswalks between existing taxonomies and any potential new taxonomy, developing
methods to better include cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary fields. SRS
will continue to collect and disseminate breakthrough data on the characteristics
of cyber-infrastructure in the nation’s academic and biomedical facilities. In
FY 2009 SRS will also support analytical and statistical activities related to
increasing the value of SRS-collected data by exploring ways to link SRS collected
data with externally available data, such as publications and patent data, for
individuals in SRS personnel surveys. (For more on NSF SRS, see Chapter
19.) |
