Transcript History of Electronic Reporting at the U.S. Census Bureau

Framework for Prioritizing
Economic Statistics Programs
Presented by Thomas L. Mesenbourg
Associate Director for Economic Programs
[email protected]
June 2007
This report is released to inform interested parties of research and to encourage discussion. Any
views expressed on statistical, methodological, technical, or operational issues are those of the
authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Presentation Outline
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•
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Budget Environment
Framework Purposes
Economic Program Criteria
Uses of Criteria
Program Improvements Model
Initial Findings
Conclusions
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Budget Environment
• Tight resources for remainder of decade
• Budget cuts will lead to program
eliminations
• Even if resources are constrained
program, improvements must be made
• Most program improvements will have
to be funded internally
3
Framework Purpose
• Help prioritize programs
• Provide information for responding to
budget cuts
• Facilitate reallocation decisions
– identify costs savings
– identify relative
efficiencies/inefficiencies
• Ensure program decisions are more
data-driven
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Economic Program Criteria Pre - 2006
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Retain programs providing source
data to BEA and FRB
Preserve programs and content that
serve as benchmarks for GDP and
other measures of economic activity
Preserve data quality of existing
programs
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2007 Program Priorities
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2010 Decennial Census
Economic Census and Census of
Governments
Principal Economic Indicators and
related annual surveys
Surveys that provide source data for
NIPA
Remaining surveys not directly used
by BEA
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Initial Use of New Criteria in FY 2007
• Needed to identify $10 million in program cuts
• Priority 2 – Economic Census and Census of Governments
– Survey of Business Owners – suggested eliminating
coverage of businesses with no paid employees
• Priority 3 – Principal Economic Indicators and related annual
surveys
– Quarterly Financial Report program – suggested eliminating
coverage of small manufacturers
• Priority 4 – Economic surveys providing NIPA source data
Suggested eliminating:
– Information and Communication Technology Survey
– Current Industrial Reports
– Survey of Residential Alterations and Repairs
• Priority 5 – All other
– County Business Patterns – suggested one year suspension
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Program Improvement Framework
Model Development
• Framework was developed over a year ago
• Ranks programs using various attributes
such as relevance, cost effectiveness, users
and uses, and quality
• Methodology is still in its infancy and needs
additional refinements
• Nine annual programs and eight economic
indicators included in the model
• Programs account for some $82 million or
about 60% of our current programs budget
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Metrics Used
• Survey value – Our two most important
stakeholders, BEA and the Federal Reserve
Board were asked to rank the surveys in
terms of importance
• Data quality – The survey’s unit response and
coefficient of variation or CV for its principal
variable were used for data quality
• Cost efficiency – Two measures for cost
efficiency were used, cost per annualized
number of survey units and cost per
annualized number of collected variables
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Metrics Not Used
• Extent of GDP coverage
• Customer satisfaction from our annual
web survey
• Number of web page hits
• Timeliness of publication
• Average revision size
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Indicator Findings
Program
BEA
FRB
Response
New Residential Construction
5
4
5
3
5
5
Value of Construction Put in Place
5
4
2
4
5
4
Advanced Monthly Retail
5
4
1
5
5
2
Monthly Retail Trade Survey
5
4
2
5
4
3
Monthly Wholesale Survey
5
4
3
4
4
4
Manufacturers’ Shipments,
Inventories, and Orders Survey
5
4
4
NA
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3
Quarterly Financial Report
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5
2
5
2
5
Quarterly Services Survey
5
4
1
3
2
1
4.9
4.1
2.5
4.1
3.8
3.4
Average
CV
$/Unit
$/Variable
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Annual Findings
Program
BEA
FRB
Response
CV
Information and Communication
Technology Survey
4
4
3
5
5
5
Annual Capital Expenditures Survey
5
4
3
4
5
5
Current Industrial Reports
5
5
3
3
4
3
Annual Public Employment Survey
5
3
4
5
4
5
Service Annual Survey
5
4
4
3
4
3
Annual Survey of Manufacturers
5
5
5
5
4
4
Annual Retail Trade Survey
5
4
4
5
3
3
Annual Government Finance Survey
5
3
4
5
3
4
Annual Trade Survey
5
3
4
4
1
1
4.9
3.9
3.8
4.3
3.7
3.7
Average
$/Unit
$/Variable
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Initial Findings
• Assessment of individual programs can not
be captured by a single measure
• Programs must be evaluated using multiple
dimensions including some not considered
• BEA and FRB rankings support our criteria,
but were not very useful in identifying lower
priority programs
• Response rate measures strikingly different
between indicators and annual surveys
• Efficiency measures not perfect, but
significant differences warrant further
investigation
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Conclusions
• Economic programs are meeting the needs of
BEA and FRB quite effectively
• Any deep program cuts will significantly
impact BEA source data
• No obvious programs to eliminate, collection
and processing efficiencies offer some hope
for funding future program improvements
• Leveraging existing surveys to collect new
content is most cost effective approach
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