Hello 2025! Here’s the latest news and updates from CNSTAT and around the statistical community for the month of January.
Upcoming Events
CNSTAT Public Seminar
The Rise of Non-Survey Administrative Data for Statistics and Evidence-Building
Monday, January 13, 2025, 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. (EST)
Register Now for In-Person and Virtual
Learn more about the event here.
CNSTAT Public Workshop
Approaches for Assessing and Communicating the Quality of National Statistics: A Workshop
Wednesday, January 29 | 11:00 am – 3:00pm ET
Monday, February 3 | 1:00 – 5:00 pm ET
Thursday, February 20 | 1:00 – 5:00 pm ET
Register Now for this all virtual event.
Learn more about the event here.
Call for Nominations
New Consensus Study
Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Homeland Security Statistics
CNSTAT is seeking nominations for experts for a new consensus study to assess the capacity of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office for Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) to provide official statistics aligned with federal standards.
Submit nominations here by January 8, 2025.
People in the News
CNSTAT congratulates
William “Sandy” Darity for receiving the William Spriggs Memorial Award by the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management
Sandy, Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished professor of public policy and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University and CNSTAT member, was awarded the inaugural William Spriggs Award. This award was created to recognize other trailblazing academics and practitioners who have helped develop our understanding of racial discrimination in public policy, education, labor markets, academic disciplines, or society at-large. Sandy’s research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment. He has a B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
CNSTAT congratulates
Sally C. Morton for election in 2024 to the National Academy of Medicine
Sally, dean of the College of Science, Lay Nam Chang dean’s chair, and professor of statistics at Virginia Tech University, has been active in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and other scientific organizations throughout her career, which included positions with the RAND Corporation, RTI International, and the University of Pittsburgh. She is a fellow and past president of ASA and a fellow and past chair of Section U (statistics) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She served on the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Methodology Committee, the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, the Committee on National Statistics, and several CNSTAT and National Academy of Medicines study committees. She has a B.S. in mathematical sciences, an M.S. in operations research, and a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University, and an M.Sc. in statistics from the London School of Economics.
CNSTAT congratulates
Brian Moyer for receiving the Data Foundation’s Statistical Official Datum Award
Brian, director of the National Center for Health Statistics and statistical official for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was one of five Datum Award recipients for 2024. Awardees must be federal employees who qualify as “champions for the use of data in evidence-informed decision-making, transparency, stakeholder engagement, and accountability” with “major impact over the past 12 months.” Awards are made for data innovation, political leadership, chief data officer, chief evaluation officer, and statistical official. Prior to overseeing NCHS, Brian served as director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He has a B.A. and M.A. in economics from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in economics from American University.
CNSTAT congratulates
Emilda Rivers on receiving a 2024 Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Award
Emilda, director of the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and statistical official for the National Science Foundation, received one of the prestigious Presidential Rank Awards established in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to recognize a select group of career members of the Senior Executive Service for exceptional performance over an extended period of time. She recently served as chair of the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building and at NCSES oversees the establishment of the National Secure Data Service demonstration project mandated in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. Prior to becoming NCSES’s director, she served as deputy director and in other capacities and held positions with the U.S. Census Bureau and the Energy Information Administration. She has a B.A. in mathematics from South Carolina State College and an M.A. from the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, University of Maryland.
CNSTAT thanks
Barry Johnson for his dedicated service as director of the IRS Statistics of Income Division (SOI)
Barry, chief analytics and data officer of the IRS, overseeing research, applied analytics, and statistics, will be retiring from federal service in January 2025. He directed the Statistics of Income Division from 2014 until recently and served as the statistical official for IRS as well as the deputy chief analytics and data officer. He made it a priority to expand the opportunities for scholars nationwide to partner with SOI staff on projects that advanced the understanding of key tax and economic issues. He served on the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has a B.S. in economics and finance from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in economics from American University.
CNSTAT takes note
Nvidia names a new superchip for David Blackwell (1919– 2010)
David was a mathematician and game theorist, who held faculty positions at Howard University and from 1955 to his retirement in 1988 in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote one of the first textbooks on Bayesian statistics in 1969. Among numerous honors, he was the first African American elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965, served as vice president of the American Statistical Association in 1978, and served as a member of CNSTAT from 1987–1990. He had B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. President Obama awarded him posthumously the National Medal of Science in 2012.
New Releases
Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Eighth Edition (Prepublication)
The 8th edition of this flagship report continues the legacy supporting the essential role of relevant, credible, trusted, independent, and innovative government statistics. Since 1992, this report has described the characteristics of effective federal statistical agencies.
Download the prepublication version of the report from here.
Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Managing Privacy and Confidentiality Risks with Blended Data
Protecting privacy and ensuring confidentiality in data is a critical component of modernizing our national data infrastructure. The use of blended data – combining previously collected data sources – presents new considerations for responsible data stewardship. This report provides a framework for managing disclosure risks that accounts for the unique attributes of blended data and poses a series of questions to guide considered decision-making.
Download here.
Creating an Integrated System of Data and Statistics on Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth: Time to Build
The report provides recommendations for developing an improved 21st century data system for measuring the extent to which economic prosperity is shared by households throughout the population and for understanding how the distribution of resources is affected by government policy and economic events.
Download here.
All of our reports can be downloaded for free from the National Academies Press.
New: Seminar Videos and Presentations
CNSTAT Public Seminar: Creating an Integrated System of Data and Statistics on Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth, December 10, 2024
New: Interactive Resources
Creating an Integrated System of Data and Statistics on Household Income, Consumption, and Wealth
Measuring Law Enforcement Suicide: Challenges and Opportunities
Strengthening the Nation’s Data Infrastructure
An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line.
Visit our website to keep up to date on CNSTAT’s activities and learn more about our projects.