Facilitating Innovation in the Federal Statistical System Summary of a Workshop (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 Scope and Importance of Innovation
2 Scope and Importance of Innovation
Pages 9-22
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From page 9... ...
are summarized first, followed by relevant points from the background paper by Hermann Habermann (2010a) , and then by participants' comments.
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These areas are all critically important to the nation, as has been noted by others. For example, the problems involved in the measurement of economic progress and welfare and, more specifically, the challenge of defining and measuring gross domestic product were raised in a recent New York Times Magazine article (Gertner, 2010)
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. The measures the advisory committee called for include a comprehensive accounting of the effect of high-tech goods and services on growth and productiv ity, as well as new data on research and development and innovationrelated inputs.1 BEA reported that there are difficult conceptual issues to be resolved in order to collect new data on such intangible investments (Aizcorbe, Moylan, and Robbins, 2009)
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From page 12... ...
the sustainability of trends in saving, investment, asset prices, and other key variables important to understanding business cycles and the sources of economic growth. With regard to various alternative indicators, such as the genuine progress indicator, the world development indicators, and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, BEA reported that "while these efforts have been much discussed and debated, there has never been sufficient consensus on the difficult issues involved to produce a common set of concepts or methods or a widely accepted regular set of estimates that were used for analytical or policy purposes" (Landefeld et al., 2010)
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Even if the "domains" covered by the index are reasonable, many economists and statisticians do not believe there is sufficient theoretical foundation to assign the appropriate weights to the domains. This problem of calculating weights also applies to other measures cited by Gertner, such as the planned Key National Indicators System3 and the Human Development Index.4 These factors do not mean that the measures do not have value in assessing progress; it does mean that more conceptual and theoreti cal work needs to be done before they will be produced by government statistical agencies.
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. Krueger, who pre viously headed the Princeton Data Improvement Initiative, which evaluated the reliability of the government statistical agencies' main economic indicators, included as weaknesses a lack of timeliness, insufficient detail, and lack of relevance of certain key statistics as well as data gaps.
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From page 15... ...
They also noted that there is limited information about the amount saved from mortgage refinancing activity, which limits the ability to estimate the aggregate economic effects of refinancing. Krueger suggested that one possible solution to filling these and related data gaps would be to establish some sort of "rapid response" data-gathering capacity in the statistical system that could be tailored to answer specific, oneshot questions, such as changes in consumption by households.
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The Census Bureau recently developed small-area estimates for health insurance coverage using a model that combines survey data with population estimates and administrative records.7 Measures of International Economic Activities In the May 2010 issue of BEA's monthly journal, the Survey of Current Business, Howell and Yuskavage (2010) discuss the agency's planned changes in the GDP accounts to more closely align them with new international guidelines.
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In his paper, Parker states that a study conducted in 2001 concluded that BLS should make changes to improve the consistency of transfer prices by collecting data consistent with administrative definitions from the Internal Revenue Service or the Customs Service or by investigating the use of export price indexes from other countries. It does not appear that significant research has been conducted into new or improved data collection methods in this important area.
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. In an article highlighting the conclusions of the National Research Council report, panel chair Lawrence Brown emphasized several challenges, including the exceptionally high cost of the 2010 census and growth of these costs relative to those of recent Canadian censuses; the continuing social and technological changes in the United States; the need for a focused research and development program for 2020 census planning; and reaction to the report by the Census Bureau staff (Brown, 2010)
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From page 19... ...
Rather than concentrating on specific examples, such as measurement of economic welfare, he focused on areas that cut across all the statistical agencies. The areas that he asserted warrant more attention include • ethods to improve response; m • mproving small-area estimates through models; i • etter metrics to understand the relationship between nonresponse b and bias; • se and production of synthetic data and a better understanding u of their strengths and limitations; • etter understanding of the likelihood of disclosure under different b sets of disclosure rules; • mprovements in editing and imputation; i • efining disclosure rules to foster release of small-area data; r • nderstanding the impact of communication technologies on the u dissemination strategies of agencies; • elping the public understand how to interpret official and nonof h ficial statistics; • orking with researchers in other disciplines to understand how w to adapt advances in self-tracking technologies (the use of smart phones, other electronic equipment, and software applications to track and transmit detailed information on daily living)
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The costs of surveys have been rising, and the costs are expected to continue to rise as nonresponse rates increase. He argued that these escalating costs will not be tolerated by taxpayers in the future, so that the federal statistical system will not be able to continue its current business model of surveys with current methods.
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From page 21... ...
pointed out that taking advantage of admin istrative data not only involves understanding how to make linkages and the accuracy of administrative data, but also requires organizational change and innovation in the way statistical agencies carry out surveys. With respect to the need for innovation, Jennifer Madans (National Center for Health Statistics)
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