Dear APDU members, Happy New Year and thank you for either renewing or joining the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). I am honored to serve as the 2021 APDU President, and I look forward to working with you this year. I am sure many of you are happy to turn the page on 2020 and […]

With the 2020 APDU Annual Conference in the rearview mirror, now is a good time to reflect on the week and look ahead to what’s next. 

It’s necessary to extend the deadline for the Census Bureau to deliver its results. Census experts strongly believe that the Census Bureau needs extra time to conduct a complete and accurate count, as the Constitution requires.

On July 21, 2020 the Trump Administration issued a memorandum on apportionment counts from the 2020 Census suggesting that unauthorized migrants would be excluded from the counts. APDU has issued a statement in response.

APDU Past President Cliff Cook encourages you to attend the APDU Annual Conference at the end of the month. In this blog post, he describes what attendees of the session “Impediments to Accurate Statistics” can expect.

The Census Bureau is rethinking the way it will produce the data published from the Census 2020. APDU member Jan Vink gives his views on how the Census Bureau can reassure data users about the quality of their data.

The Census Bureau’s solution to protecting privacy is a new DAS based on a methodology referred to as Differential Privacy (DP). The Census commissioned the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to host a 2-day Workshop on 2020 Census Data Products: Data Needs and Privacy Considerations, held in Washington, DC, on December 11-12, 2019. This post provides an overview of the findings.

APDU is welcoming proposals on any topic related to the privacy, accuracy, and access of public data.  Proposals can be for a single presentation or panel, whether based on a particular project, data practice, or formal paper.  In keeping with the theme of the conference, our interest is in highlighting the breadth of public data to both producers and consumers of public data. Deadline: February 28, 2020.

The next nationwide count starts in most of the country this March, and companies can help ensure its accuracy by encouraging employees and customers to participate.

The House has passed appropriations bills to the Senate for FY2020, and there are important developments for statistical agencies. The Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) each received modest to substantial increases in their budgets.

Congratulations to this year’s winners! Register for the 2019 APDU Annual Conference today to learn from awardees about how they created these excellent visualizations.

Although many APDU Conference attendees show up to share information about their government agencies’ data products, private companies like PolicyMap have a compelling business reason to attend:  it’s the easiest, most reliable way to learn about what’s in store for data, and data is our lifeblood. 

The 2019 Association of Public Data Users (APDU) Annual Conference, “Wide World of Data,” will be the place to be July 9-10!  The meeting will not only offer attendees cutting edge information about advances affecting public data collection, dissemination, and application, but also will provide them with insights into the politics and policies affecting federal statistical agencies and surveys. 

If you ask a data user to name public data sources, she might name the decennial census, American Community Survey, National Vital Statistics System, or Current Population Survey. Each of those sources provides robust, timely, accurate public data on important topics like population, housing, and employment. Yet the “big name” public data sources merely hint at the breadth and depth of data available, which includes information on consumer expenditures, healthcare access and utilization, and participation in the arts.

Be sure to register for the 2019 APDU Annual Conference! The conference is being held at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA on July 9-10. The agenda is set and there are some very exciting speakers.

As 2019 APDU Annual Conference Committee Chair, I would like to cordially invite you to attend what is shaping up to be a fantastic 2019 APDU Annual Conference July 9 – 10 at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA. 

The Association of Public Data Users (APDU) is pleased to announce the 2019 Data Viz Awards. We are once again soliciting creative and meaningful graphic designs that use publicly-available data (for example, data from the Census Bureau or Bureau of Labor Statistics) to convey a compelling point or story.

APDU staff attended the Census 2020: Navigating the National and Local Challenges panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution to hear legal, demographic, and Census experts discuss a Decennial Census that has garnered interest both for its importance and for its controversies. Primary questions from the meeting revolved implications of including the citizenship question in the Decennial Census, cybersecurity, and how to encourage residents to respond.

After over a year of waiting, the Senate has confirmed William Beach as Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for a term of four years. He replaces William Wiatrowski, who had been serving as Acting Commissioner since 2017.

The 2019 APDU Annual Conference is welcoming APDU members and friends to join with our theme of “Wide World of Data” by submitting a proposal for a presentation or panel related to public data. The conference, to be held in Arlington, VA in July 2019, brings together data users and data producers for conversations and presentations on a wide variety of data and statistical topics.

APDU is pleased to announce the results of the elections for our Board of Directors.

It is imperative that sophisticated data users respond to this FRN. As John Abowd’s blog makes clear, we can control the fitness-for-use of the 2020 Census data products, but the Census Bureau cannot give every use case the same margin-of-error (just as we currently cannot give every statistic from the ACS the same MOE).

This year, in mid-July, public data collectors and users across the country gathered in Arlington, Virginia to discuss the future of public data and its promise to inform public and private sector decisions. APDU Vice President and Conference Chair Kevin McAvey gives his thoughts in this blog post.

The Secretary of Agriculture announced on Thursday, August 9 that the Economic Research Service will undergo several significant changes in the coming year.