News from COPAFS

Executive Director Ed Spar provided an update on the status of leadership within two statistical agencies at the March 11, 2005, COPAFS meeting. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics is under reorganization, and the director position is no longer a presidential appointee. At the present time, there is little to report in the way of progress or direction for this important agency. Bob Lerner, former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), has not been reappointed, nor has his name been sent to the Hill for reappointment. At this writing, the NCES is without a commissioner. Spar also drew attention to a document summarizing the various standing subcommittees of the House Committee on Government Reform, the source of most statistical agency oversight, and to several changes and shifts in oversight responsibility that may have implications for the statistical agencies.

Four presentations, summarized below, filled the agenda for the remainder of the meeting.

National Health Accounts

Jack Triplett of the Brookings Institution discussed “National Health Accounts—What Do We Really Spend on Treatments?” He noted that while the United States spends more on healthcare per capita and per GDP than any other nation, current data do not adequately answer the questions of “how much do we spend,” and “is it worth it?”

While national health accounts have been published for about 40 years, they only begin to address healthcare expenditure questions. What national health accounts do not tell us is what diseases the money is spent on. Citing Dorothy Rice’s early work, Triplett described a set of cost of disease accounts that the National Center for Health Statistics had been producing every four or five years. The last set of cost of disease data was produced in 1997, with no plans for updates. So there remains a large body of work on price indexing by disease, but no more disease-specific spending data.

In summary, we currently do not have the data needed to address the question, “is what we spend on healthcare worth it?” While we have data on how much spending goes to doctors, hospitals, medications, and so on, we do not know what we are getting from these expenditures. Triplett argued that we could have a more complete framework of healthcare expenditure measures that would promote understanding and informed decisions for a truly modest expenditure.

Immigration Statistics

Michael Hoefer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security provided attendees with an overview of the department’s statistical activities. Hoefer is director of immigration statistics in the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/index.htm) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), home of what we used to know as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). He was quick to point out that his division is independent of the enforcement functions at DHS.

The INS has been collecting immigration statistics since 1820, but Hoefer commented that we still do not have good information on people entering or leaving the United States. He described the three major strategic goals that are driving the office’s work.

The first major goal is to take the lead among federal agencies in developing relevant customer-oriented statistical information on immigration. In pursuing this goal, OIS will continue estimating the unauthorized population and develop annual estimates of the temporary resident population. It is also exploring new sources of information as alternatives to adding questions to immigrant applications and other administrative record sources.

The second goal is to improve the quality and common understanding of immigration data. Activities include creating a DHS Immigration Data Council, and working with stakeholders to develop better services and guidelines for data collection, processing, and documentation.

The office’s third goal is the timely dissemination of high-quality, user-friendly statistical information to customers and stakeholders. Actions take the form of published OIS analyses and reports, a revamping and promotion of the OIS web site, and a broadening and deepening of communications.

Hoefer also described US-VISIT, a system being developed in response to September 11 that seeks to identify citizens and noncitizens entering and leaving the United States. The system’s incremental implementation could take the form of electronic passports and other measures to provide “comprehensive flow numbers” and improved data on length of stay.

Urban Market Initiative

Andrew Reamer of the Brookings Institution described Brookings’ Urban Market Initiative (UMI) as a three-year, $100 million effort supported by Living Cities. Living Cities is a collaboration of nonprofit, private-sector, and public-sector investors committed to the revitalization of America’s urban centers. The UMI mission is to improve the quality and use of data available for urban areas, thereby improving the quality of investment decisions and increasing the competitiveness of urban markets as places for investment.

Among UMI’s activities is the development of the National Infrastructure for Community Statistics (NICS). NICS is described as a nationwide web-based broker facilitating access to community level statistics from thousands of local, state, federal, and commercial data sources. While not providing direct links to these sources (Reamer described it as links to links), NICS will encourage the development of basic metadata standards and other conditions that will define data sources as “NICS-ready.”

A successful NICS is seen as promoting enhanced data access and interpreting nationwide local data, which, in turn, would enhance investment decision making. An immediate priority is identifying “use cases” that illustrate the potential of NICS. Brookings has already held several meetings to develop a “community of practice” among potential NICS participants, and an April meeting will be devoted to the business plan and proposed criteria for “use cases.”

Since so many AUBER units work closely with their State Data Centers and are often involved in the production of economic and demographic statistics, the Brookings-UMI-NCIS initiative should be followed closely as it will present many opportunities for involvement on the part of AUBER members.

ACS Outreach

Nancy Torrieri of the U.S. Census Bureau provided an update on stakeholder outreach for the American Community Survey (ACS) (http://www.census.gov/acs/www/). She noted that the recent Congressional authorization to initiate full implementation of the ACS as a major component of the 2010 Census (replacing the long form) has begun, and the development of a full, national sample is now underway. Efforts to communicate with ACS stakeholders, including Congress, professional associations, as well as state, local, and tribal governments, have occurred in three stages: (1) generate interest in the ACS (1995-1999); (2) build relationships (2000-2003); and (3) provide support (2004–2012). Stage one and stage two activities included the development of the ACS web site, release of ACS test data on CD-ROM, and efforts to work with regional demographers. As part of stage three activities, the Census Bureau has prepared a comprehensive booklet describing the ACS, and is actively soliciting comments on ACS data products.

The third stage, providing support, runs from 2004 through 2012. Torrieri reviewed a booklet the Census Bureau has prepared that describes the ACS and solicits support from local officials and others.

Torrieri noted that the Census Bureau is holding workshops to answer detailed questions on the ACS and the 2010 Census, and Census staff members are working with their subject matter counterparts at the local level to increase training opportunities for data users. The Census Bureau also is preparing an ACS data user guide and hopes to have a preliminary version available by the end of this summer. Finally, the Census Bureau will be sending e-mail alerts to its ACS mailing list. AUBER members are encouraged to subscribe in order to receive timely information.

Paul Zelus, Idaho State University and
Tom Witt, West Virginia University
AUBER representatives to COPAFS

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