CNSTAT has been committed to nonpartisan, evidence-based approaches to providing advice to the statistical community, the federal government, and the nation since our inception in 1972. As always, our publications and other resources are available to all for free on our website. Here’s the latest news and updates from CNSTAT and around the statistical community for the month of March.
Materials Available: Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency
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 here.
Available Resources:
Interactive Overview
Report Highlights
One-page Summary
Issue Brief: Strengthening Partnerships with State and Local Data Stewards
Presentation from COPAFS March 7, 2025 Meeting: Introducing the 8th edition of Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency
Upcoming Events
CNSTAT Public Workshop
Approaches for Assessing and Communicating the Quality of National Statistics
This workshop is being rescheduled. To stay up-to-date please either monitor the project’s website or sign-up for our mailing list here, select “National Surveys and Statistics.”
People in the News
CNSTAT congratulates
Claire McKay Bowen, chosen for the inaugural Dionne Price Public Lecture
Bowen, senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population and Statistical Methods Group lead at the Urban Institute, will give the inaugural Dionne Price Public Lecture (in-person and virtual) on April 22, 2025, at 3:00 p.m. Her topic is: Government Data of the People, by the People, for the People: Balancing Personal Privacy and the Public Good. The American Statistical Association (ASA) established the lecture to honor Dionne’s “deep commitment to working for the public good”—Dionne was a biostatistician and division director with the Food and Drug Administration and the first Black president of ASA. Registration information is available here.
Rolf R. Schmitt, recipient of the 2024 Robert E. Skinner Jr. Distinguished Transportation Research Management Award
Schmitt, deputy director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) receives this award from the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board (TRB) for his four-decade career advancing transportation statistics. Rolf played a pivotal role in launching the BTS, ensuring that robust data on freight and passenger transportation is available for research, planning, and policymaking. Throughout his career, Rolf has worked closely with federal agencies, led numerous TRB committees, and promoted the use of statistics to improve transportation policies and outcomes.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health State Estimates Dashboard of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, winner of the inaugural Statistical Product Award
Based on its review of federal data products, the program offered recommendations to improve them in terms of timeliness, interoperability, centralizing where to find documentation, explaining uncertainty, and improving bulk data access through FTP sites and APIs. The Statistical Product Award, of the newly established Federal Data Excellence Program from the Partnership for Public Service and USAFacts, honors products that share data collected through surveys, scientific studies or other research methods. Eighteen products were assessed in 2024. Honorable Mention went to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics’ Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey Data Tables.
CNSTAT mourns
Passing of Christopher (“Sandy”) Jencks
Sandy Jencks, Malcolm Wiener professor of social policy, emeritus, at the Harvard Kennedy School, died February 8, 2025, at age 88. He taught at Harvard (both the Kennedy School and the Graduate School of Education), Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Earlier, he was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, and an editor of the New Republic. He co-founded The American Prospect with Paul Starr and others in 1989. His most recent research dealt with changes in family structure over the past generation, the costs and benefits of economic inequality, the extent to which economic advantages are inherited, and the effects of welfare reform. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, served on the CNSTAT panel that produced the 2002 report At What Price: Conceptualizing and Measuring Cost-of-Living and Price Indexes, and was a member of CNSTAT’s parent unit, the Division (then Commission) of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. He had a B.A. from Harvard in English literature, an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and studied sociology at the London School of Economics.
Passing of Robert (“Bob”) P. Parker
Bob Parker, exceptional public servant, died February 16, 2025, at the age of 84. His long career in the federal government focused on the preparation and use of official federal statistics and on maintaining their independence, quality, and relevance. He spent 10 years at the Census Bureau, developing new economic statistics programs. He then worked for 30 years at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), rising to chief statistician and associate director for National Economic Accounts and playing a major role in improving the reliability, transparency, and relevance of measured Gross Domestic Product (GDP). After BEA, he spent 5 years as chief statistician of the Government Accountability Office, directing congressional reports on federal statistics, including a study of the American Community Survey. When he left BEA, an article in Barron’s weekly report dubbed Bob “The King of Stats.” He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and recipient of the Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics of the Washington Statistical Society, the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), and the ASA Business and Economics Statistics Section. He also received the Butler Award of the New York Association for Business Economics. He remained professionally active in retirement, especially in NABE. He and his wife, Nancy Gordon (former associate director at the Census Bureau), represented ASA on the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics. He had a B.A. in mathematics from Duke University.
CNSTAT thanks
Daniel Cork for his years of dedicated service with CNSTAT
Senior program officer Dan Cork is leaving CNSTAT after almost 25 years of outstanding work on March 14, 2025. He anticipates joining the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University as a senior fellow in early April. Dan joined CNSTAT in summer 2000 to work with Connie Citro and Mike Cohen on the panel, chaired by the late Janet Norwood, that produced several interim reports and a final report in 2004, The 2000 Census: Counting Under Adversity. Dan’s subsequent impactful work included directing studies on residence rules in the census, the National Crime Victimization Survey, programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, modernizing crime statistics, cybercrime classification and measurement, research and experimentation for the 2010 census, critical innovations for the 2020 census (use of the internet as a response mode, streamlined address updating, scheduling of enumerators via computer algorithm, and use of administrative records for enumeration), and an in-depth evaluation of the 2020 census. Dan has a B.S. in statistics from George Washington University and an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in statistics and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University. He has received several staff awards from the National Academies’ Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. He will be missed.
Joseph DeCarolis for his service at the Department of Energy
Joe DeCarolis was confirmed by the Senate as administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on March 31, 2022. He stepped down on January 20, 2025. He also served as the statistical official for the Department of Energy. Previously, he served as a professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NC State). He also worked as an environmental scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, where he was involved in energy systems modeling to quantify the air pollution impacts from future energy system development. He received several awards from NC State and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has a B.S. in physics and environmental science and policy from Clark University in Worcester, MA, and a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Victoria (“Tori”) Velkoff for her years of dedicated service at the U.S. Census Bureau
Associate director for demographic programs since November 2018, Tori Velkoff is retiring from federal service at the end of March 2025. Her career spanned more than 30 years at the Census Bureau, where she was chief of the American Community Survey Office and before that chief of the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division and assistant chief in the Population Division. Her research has focused on the impact of aging worldwide, gender issues, and the collection, analysis, and dissemination of demographic data. She has a Ph.D. in sociology and demography from Princeton University and a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan. She has received several Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Awards for her work.
New Releases
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.
Download here.
New: Seminar Videos and Presentations
- CNSTAT Public Seminar: The Rise of Non-Survey Administrative Data for Statistics and Evidence-Building January 13, 2025
- 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.