Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Eighth Edition (2025)
Chapter: Appendix B: Organization of the U.S. Federal Statistical System
Appendix B
Organization of the U.S. Federal Statistical System
This appendix provides a brief history of the U.S. statistical system. It then summarizes the structure and statistical functions of central members of that system: the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB); the 13 recognized federal statistical agencies; 3 recognized statistical units; and 13 Statistical Officials in other federal departments recognized by the Evidence Act;1 joined by over 100 other significant statistical programs2 across federal agencies. This is followed by a description of five central mechanisms by which OMB coordinates the federal statistical system: convening the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP) and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM); conducting information collection reviews; and annual reporting of federal statistical budget priorities to Congress through Statistical Programs of the US Federal Government and Analytical Perspectives.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL STATISTICAL SYSTEM
The United States has a highly decentralized statistical system, in contrast with other countries (Norwood, 1995). Essentially, the system grew by adding separate agencies whenever the need for objective empirical
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1 The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 expanded the ICSP from the heads of the principal statistical agencies to also include Statistical Officials at Departments subject to the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act.
2 Defined as having at least $3 million in funding for statistical programs over the past 2 consecutive years.
information on a particular aspect of the economy, society, or environment came to the fore. Periodic recommendations from presidential commissions and other initiatives to consolidate one or more of the recognized statistical agencies have never been adopted.
In fact, the U.S. government collected and published statistics long before any distinct federal statistical agency was formed (Anderson, 2015; Citro, 2016; Duncan & Shelton, 1978; Norwood, 1995). The U.S. Constitution mandates a decennial census of population; the first such censuses (beginning in 1790) were conducted by U.S. marshals as one of their many duties. The Constitution also mandates reporting of federal government receipts and expenditures, which led to early collection by the U.S. Department of the Treasury of foreign trade statistics because of the reliance of the federal government on tariffs for revenues in the 19th century. A census of manufactures was first taken in conjunction with the 1810 population census, and the 1820 population census laid the groundwork for additional economic statistics by asking for the number of household members principally employed in agriculture, manufacturing, or commerce.
Many federal statistical agencies can trace their roots back to the 19th or early 20th century. In the 1860s, Congress enacted laws providing for the compilation of statistics on agriculture, education, and income. It established the Bureau of Labor (forerunner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics) as a separate agency with a mandate to respond to widespread public demand for information on the conditions of industrial workers in 1884. It established the Census Bureau as a permanent agency in 1902. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) were organized in their current form following World War II. Other agencies were organized after that time. In total, currently there are 13 recognized statistical agencies and 3 recognized statistical units, as described in the next section.
Today, OMB, through its Statistical and Science Policy Office (which has roots going back to the 1930s) coordinates the U.S. statistical system, as described further below.
CURRENT STRUCTURE AND MEMBERSHIP
In addition to OMB, there are 13 recognized federal statistical agencies and 3 recognized statistical units (agencies whose principal mission is to produce official federal statistics), joined by over 100 other federal programs in statistical activities spanning measurement, information collection, statistical products, data management, and dissemination.3 Of this latter
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3 Using a threshold of $3 million in estimated or direct funding for statistical activities in the forthcoming or either of the past 2 fiscal years, there were 109 federal statistical programs in 2022 (Office of Management and Budget, 2023b).
SOURCE: https://www.statspolicy.gov/about/#office-chief
group, there are an additional 13 Statistical Officials in CFO Act agencies. Each of these groups has distinct responsibilities under the authority of the Paperwork Reduction Act (Paperwork Reduction Act, 1995), CIPSEA (Confidential Information and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018, 2019), and the Evidence Act (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019). (See Figure B-1 and Appendix A.)
Office of Management and Budget
OMB coordinates the work of 16 federal recognized statistical agencies and units (RSAUs) and Statistical Officials in federal agencies subject to the CFO Act. Part of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within OMB, the Statistical and Science Policy branch (SSP) is headed by the Chief Statistician of the U.S., which is a senior executive civil service position (Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, 1990).
Among other activities, OMB establishes statistical policies and standards, identifies priorities for improving programs, evaluates statistical programs for compliance with OMB guidance, reviews budget proposals for the recognized statistical agencies and units to ensure alignment with federal statistical systemwide priorities, reviews and approves information collection requests for the recognized statistical agencies and units, and coordinates U.S. participation in international statistical activities.4 SSP currently has a staff of 12 professionals, 8 of whom work on statistical policy in addition to the Chief Statistician. This small team is often augmented by professional staff from other agencies who are working on particular statistical policy initiatives. Appendix A provides an overview of the authority of OMB over federal statistics, and other significant legislation, regulation, and policy guidance that affect the U.S. statistical system.
Recognized Federal Statistical Agencies
This section covers the 13 recognized federal statistical agencies defined by the Paperwork Reduction Act (Paperwork Reduction Act, 1995), CIPSEA (Confidential Information and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018, 2019), and the Evidence Act (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019). The information presented here includes origins, authorizing legislation or other authority, and status of agency head (presidential appointee, career senior executive service official). The agencies are discussed in alphabetical order. For the most current descriptions of federal statistical agency activities, see Statistical Programs of the United States Government: Fiscal Years 2021/2022 (also known as the “Blue Book”; Office of Management and Budget, 2023b).
Bureau of Economic Analysis
BEA5 is part of the Department of Commerce (as is the Census Bureau). BEA is made up entirely of career civil servants, with its director a career senior executive service appointee. BEA’s history traces back to 1820, when Congress directed the Secretary of the Treasury to compile and publish statistics on U.S.-foreign commerce. BEA’s three 20th-century predecessors were all located in the Department of Commerce: the Bureau of Statistics (1903–1912); the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce (1912–1945); and the Office of Business Economics (1945–1972).
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4 https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-regulatory-affairs/statistical-programsstandards/; https://www.statspolicy.gov
BEA produces statistics on the nation’s economy relied upon by policymakers, businesses, and households. Although BEA conducts surveys for its international statistics, the agency primarily collects data from other sources, including government agencies, such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and from private companies. These data flow into the production of a wide array of essential national, industry, regional, and international economic statistics. One core BEA statistic, the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), recognized by the Department of Commerce as its greatest achievement of the 20th century, impacts decision making and financial markets worldwide. So, too, does BEA’s personal consumption expenditures price index, a closely watched inflation gauge.
Throughout its history, BEA has continually innovated, improving statistics and timeliness, expanding geographies and detail, and creating new measures to keep pace with the changing world we live in. BEA also produces “satellite accounts,” which take a close look at a part of the U.S. economy, such as health care, outdoor recreation, and arts and culture. These supplementary statistics allow in-depth analysis of special topics that are not easily seen within BEA’s core statistics.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS),6 in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), was formally established by the Justice Systems Improvement Act of 1979 (Pub. Law 96-157). It inherited statistical functions that had previously been vested in an office of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (which had been established in 1968).
BJS is housed in the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), which also contains the National Institute of Justice (a research agency) and other agencies that are primarily focused on providing grant and technical assistance to state and local governments and law enforcement agencies. BJS’s director is a presidential appointee (not requiring Senate confirmation—a change as of August 2012) and reports to the assistant attorney general for OJP.
The centerpiece of BJS’s data collections is the National Crime Victimization Survey (originally the National Crime Survey), which has served as one of the nation’s principal measures of crime, particularly crime not reported to police, since its full-scale implementation in 1972. Data collection for most BJS surveys is conducted by the Census Bureau or private contractors.
BJS publishes annual statistics on criminal victimization, populations under correctional supervision, case processing in the state and federal courts, criminal justice employment and expenditure, and sexual violence
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in prisons under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. Its periodic data series covers the administration of law enforcement agencies and correctional facilities, practices and policies of prosecutors and indigent defense providers, state court case processing, recidivism of those released from state prisons, and special studies on other criminal justice topics.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)7 is an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor, which is responsible for the production of some of the nation’s most sensitive and important economic data, including unemployment statistics and consumer and producer price indexes, which are closely watched by the public, Congress, other federal agencies, state and local governments, businesses, and labor organizations. The BLS commissioner is a presidential appointee, subject to Senate confirmation, and serves for a fixed term of 4 years.
The history of BLS dates back to 1884, when the Bureau of Labor was established in the Interior Department to collect information about employment and labor. It was made an independent (subcabinet) agency by the Department of Labor Act in 1888, it was made part of the Department of Commerce and Labor (as the Bureau of Labor) in 1903, and it was transferred to the newly created Department of Labor in 1913.
BLS programs use a variety of data collection methods and sources. Certain wage, benefit, employment, and price data are collected by BLS staff, in offices throughout the country, who contact employers, households, and businesses directly. BLS also has contractual arrangements with various state agencies to collect much of the data it publishes on employment and workplace safety and health. Its contractual arrangements with the Census Bureau support the collection of data for several programs, including the Current Population Survey (the source of monthly unemployment statistics) and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (the source of the market baskets for the Consumer Price Index [CPI]). Some BLS data, such as those for the various national longitudinal surveys, are collected by private contractors.
BLS’s surveys, indexes, and statistics fall into four main categories:
- Consumer expenditures and prices, including the CPI, the producer price index, and U.S. import and export prices indexes;
- The labor force, including monthly data on employment from households and business establishments, monthly and periodic data on unemployment, time use, job openings and labor turnover,
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- occupational employment and projections of trends, and longitudinal data on the work experience of cohorts of the population;
- Compensation and working conditions, including the employment cost index, workplace injuries and fatalities, employee benefits, and occupational requirements; and
- Productivity.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)8 is under the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology (OST-R) in the U.S. Department of Transportation. OST-R also includes the Office of Research, Development, and Technology; the Transportation Safety Institute; and the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. The assistant secretary reports to the Undersecretary for Policy.
BTS’s director is a career senior executive service appointee who reports to the assistant secretary. Prior to 2004, the director was a presidential appointee with a fixed term of 4 years who reported directly to the secretary of the department.
BTS was established by the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act and began operations in late 1992. It was moved to the newly created Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) by the Norman Y. Mineta Research and Special Programs Improvement Act of 2004. BTS moved with the rest of RITA to OST-R in 2014. The 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (Pub. Law 114-94) authorized the reorganization of BTS and strengthened its ability to produce statistical products free of political influence.
In regard to independence, Section 6017 of the FAST Act (Title 49—Transportation, 2024) specified that the BTS director did not need the approval of the department for data collection or analysis or for the substance of any statistical data product or press release. The act charged the BTS director with a “significant role” in allocation of the BTS budget, hiring, and grant and contract awards, with the exception that the secretary was to direct external support functions, such as coordination of activities involving BTS and other departmental administrations. Finally, the act charged the departmental chief information officer to consult with the BTS director to ensure that information technology decisions protected the confidentiality of BTS statistical information in accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA).
Prior to the establishment of BTS, statistical programs of the Department of Transportation focused primarily on specific modes of transportation
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(highways, airlines, railroads, etc.). BTS was founded to provide statistics across all forms of transportation. BTS is charged to produce an annual report on transportation statistics, develop intermodal data on commodity and passenger flows, administer the National Transportation Library, and carry out other functions to ensure that the department, the states, and other federal agencies have available comprehensive information on the nation’s transportation systems. BTS also operates the Office of Airline Information, which was transferred to the Department of Transportation from the now-defunct Civil Aeronautics Board in 1995. The 2015 FAST Act added a new Port Performance Freight Statistics Program to BTS’s portfolio.
BTS contracts with the Census Bureau for major surveys.
Census Bureau
The Census Bureau9 is part of the Department of Commerce (as is BEA). It conducts a census of the population, censuses of governments and businesses, and over 130 surveys of people and the economy.
Starting in 1790, U.S. marshals conducted the first population censuses under the authority of the Secretary of State. Beginning in 1840, the Secretary of State appointed a “superintending clerk” to coordinate the enumeration, data compilation, and publication of the final reports. In 1849, control of the census moved to the Department of the Interior. As the census became more complex, specially trained enumerators replaced U.S. marshals as the data collectors in 1880. In 1902, Congress established a permanent Census Bureau, which then moved to the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903. In 1913, the Census Bureau moved to the newly created Department of Commerce, where it remains today. Since 1954, Title 13 of the U.S. Code authorizes the major legal provisions related to the Census Bureau, including strict requirements for protecting the confidentiality of personal and business information.
The director of the Census Bureau is appointed by the President with Senate confirmation for a fixed 5-year term that can be renewed once (to begin in years ending in 2 and 7).10
The major periodic activity of the Census Bureau is the decennial population census, which in 2020 consisted of basic questions on age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, relationship to household head, and housing tenure (own, rent). As part of the decennial census program, the Census Bureau also conducts the continuous American Community Survey, which includes questions previously part of a long-form sample in the decennial census.
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10 The fixed term was signed into law in August 2012; previously, the director served at the pleasure of the President.
The Census Bureau also has a large portfolio of censuses and surveys about businesses, nonprofit organizations, and federal, state, and local governments. Population and housing estimates are updated annually using administrative records in cooperation with state and local governments. The economic census of businesses and the census of governments take place every 5 years (in years ending in 2 or 7). The Census Bureau also has a portfolio of demographic surveys, including surveys it conducts jointly with or for other statistical agencies. The Census Bureau produces annual estimates of poverty, median income, and health insurance coverage using the Current Population Survey, which BLS uses to produce the unemployment rate. The Census Bureau also does the data collection for the American Housing Survey (for the Department of Housing and Urban Development), the Consumer Expenditure Survey (for BLS), the National Crime Victimization Survey (for BJS), and the National Health Interview Survey (for NCHS).
Economic Research Service
The Economic Research Service (ERS),11 along with the National Agricultural Statistics Service and two other agencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), reports to the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics. The administrator of ERS is a career senior executive appointee.
The origins of ERS trace back to 1905, when USDA established the Office of Farm Management, which was renamed the Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics in 1919. The office’s research areas included farm organization, cost of production, farm labor, farm finance, land economics, agricultural history, and rural life studies. Several reorganizations took place, and in 1961 USDA created ERS, assigning it responsibility for conducting economic research and policy analysis to inform program and policy decisions throughout USDA. The agency’s mission is to anticipate trends and emerging issues related to agriculture, food, the environment, and rural America and conduct peer-reviewed economic research so that research findings are available when issues require decisions by policymakers. As a statistical agency, ERS does not make policy recommendations. Rather, its research is designed to inform policy or programmatic decisions.
ERS is also the primary source of statistical indicators on food and agriculture, such as those that gauge the health of the farm sector (including farm income and wealth estimates and forecasts), assess the current and expected performance of the agricultural sector (including trade impacts and productivity), measure food insecurity in the United States and abroad, and track
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dimensions of food availability and access. ERS jointly funds several primary data collection efforts, including the Agricultural Resources Management Survey on farm household and business income and crop practices and the Survey of Irrigation Organizations on local irrigation management practices and decisions, both also funded by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, as well as the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey, which focuses on American households’ food purchase and acquisitions behavior, also funded by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.
Energy Information Administration
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)12 is an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); its Administrator is a presidential appointee with Senate confirmation.
EIA was created by Congress in 1977 as part of the newly established DOE. Its mission is to provide independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment. To assure EIA’s independence, the Department of Energy Organization Act specifies that EIA’s products are not subject to clearance by executive branch officials: in particular, the Administrator does not need to obtain the approval of any other DOE official for data collection and analysis, and he or she does not need to “obtain the approval of any other officer or employee of the United States” before publishing energy data and analysis reports (42 USC 7135(d)).
Many EIA data products, such as weekly, monthly, and annual data on petroleum and natural gas supply, deal with specific industries; others contain data on all fuel types. EIA’s mandatory energy supply surveys collect data from energy producers, users, and transporters, and certain other businesses. Data on energy consumption are collected for households, commercial buildings, and the manufacturing sector. EIA’s analyses cover energy economics, technology, production, prices, distribution, storage, consumption, and environmental effects.
EIA forecasts cover all energy types and include supply, consumption, prices, and other factors. Short-term forecasts cover 1–2 years; long-term projections cover about 30 years and often serve as the baseline for independent analyses of policy proposals at the request of Congress or the administration. Data collection, validation, and dissemination constitute EIA’s largest operational area and require its most significant resource investments; additional resources are used to support the energy modeling and analysis program.
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National Agricultural Statistics Service
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)13 is under the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics in USDA (as is ERS). The Administrator of NASS is a career senior executive service appointee.
The foundation of NASS began with the establishment of USDA in 1862. Agricultural supply information was one of the purposes of the new department. The first official report on the condition of crops was issued in July 1863. NASS’s mission of providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics continues today through its agriculture estimates and census of agriculture programs. In its agricultural estimates program, NASS provides the USDA forecasts and estimates for numerous commodities. The census of agriculture is conducted every 5 years and provides comprehensive information about the nation’s agriculture down to the county level, which provides a foundation for farm policy among its many uses.
Slightly more than one-third of the agency’s staff are attached to its Washington, DC, headquarters; with the remainder of the staff at the National Operations Center near St. Louis, Missouri, and 12 regional offices, each of which is responsible for the statistical work in several states. All field and telephone interviewing staff are obtained through contracting with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA). NASS researchers also collaborate with researchers, largely from land-grant universities and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, to improve statistical methodologies and practices of both the agricultural estimates and the census of agriculture programs.
NASS provides data services for many agencies inside and outside USDA. It collaborates with state departments of agriculture and land-grant universities to meet state, local, and national needs for agricultural statistics. Through cooperative agreements going back as far as 1917 and memoranda of understanding, NASS provides data collection and statistical services to other federal agencies, and it provides statistics to the public through trust fund agreements with private producer organizations when federal funding is inadequate.
NASS works with its regional field offices to carry out hundreds of surveys every year and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of U.S. agriculture. Examples include production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm finances, chemical use, and changes in the demographic characteristics of U.S. producers.
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National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)14 is part of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education; IES also includes three research and evaluation centers. The NCES commissioner is a presidential appointee for a fixed term of 6 years.15
NCES’s origins date back to 1867, when Congress established a Department of Education and gave it a primary mission of “collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems and methods of teaching” (An Act to Establish a Department of Education, 1867). The legislation also charged the department’s commissioner to issue an annual report. However, only 2 years later the department was abolished, and an Office of Education was established in the U.S. Department of the Interior, where it remained through 1939. The Office of Education was part of the newly created Federal Security Agency from 1939 to 1953, when it was made part of the newly created U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. A separate Department of Education was reestablished in 1980.
A major function of the Office of Education throughout its history was the collection and publication of education statistics. NCES was established in 1965 as a staff office reporting to the Commissioner of Education. NCES received statutory authority in 1974; in 1980 it was made part of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, which in 2002 became the IES. Supporting the independence of NCES, the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, which created IES, stipulated that “each Commissioner [head of one of IES’s constituent centers], except the Commissioner for Education Statistics, shall carry out such Commissioner’s duties […] under the supervision and subject to the approval of the Director” of IES (20 USC 9517(d)).
NCES has an extensive survey program, including longitudinal surveys that follow the educational experience of cohorts of the U.S. population from early childhood through adulthood, periodic surveys of adult literacy, and international studies of educational achievement. It also collects the “Common Core of Data” from administrative records of state and local K–12 educational agencies, and it collects data for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. It regularly assesses the educational knowledge and achievement of primary and secondary school students through the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It also administers the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems program, which provides grants to the states to develop
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15 Senate confirmation is no longer required as of August 2012.
longitudinal databases of student records for analyzing student performance and for identifying methods to improve achievement.
National Center for Health Statistics
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)16 is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The NCHS director is a career senior executive service appointee.
NCHS was formed from two formerly separate entities for the provision of national health statistics. The first entity dates back to 1902 when Congress gave the Census Bureau authority to work with state agencies to produce nationally comparable vital statistics, which included vital statistics on births, deaths, and other life events. This function was transferred in 1946 to the Federal Security Administration, which in 1953 was folded into the new U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a precursor to the current HHS. The second entity was authorized in the 1956 National Health Survey Act to collect general statistics on the nation’s health.
NCHS was formally created in 1960 by merging the National Office of Vital Statistics and the National Health Survey Division. It was relocated within HHS every few years until its last relocation in 1987, when it was moved under CDC. In 2005, NCHS became one of three centers reporting to the newly created Coordinating Center for Health Information and Service in CDC. In 2013, further administrative reorganization placed NCHS within the new CDC Office of Public Health Scientific Services (Office of Management and Budget, 2013a). Subsequently, in 2023, NCHS was placed within the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology within CDC.
NCHS has four major data collection programs:
- The National Health Interview Survey, in continuous operation since 1956, which collects a wide range of information on self-reported health status and conditions and use of health care services by the population;
- The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which ascertains self-reported information on health and dietary intake and also, by use of mobile examining units, obtains extensive information from physical examinations and laboratory tests;
- Healthcare surveys of various providers, including hospitals, outpatient facilities, and long-term care providers; and
- Vital statistics, which are collected and maintained by the 50 states, 5 U.S. territories, New York City, and Washington, DC.
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National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)17 is part of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Its director is a career senior executive service appointee.
NCSES was formerly the Division of Science Resources Statistics, and before that it was the Division of Science Resources Studies. It became NCSES with passage of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (Section 505; 42 USC 1862), with an expanded mandate to serve as a “central Federal clearinghouse for the collection, interpretation, analysis, and dissemination of objective data on science, engineering, technology, and research and development.”
NCSES’s history began in 1950, when the newly created NSF was charged to maintain a register of scientific and technical personnel so that the nation would be able to mobilize the scientific and technical workforce in the event of a major war. Although no longer required to maintain a complete register, NSF has continued (by the terms of its founding act, as amended) to have responsibility “to provide a central clearinghouse for the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data on scientific and engineering resources and to provide a source of information for policy formulation by other agencies of the Federal Government” (42 USC 1862). NSF also has a congressional mandate from 1980 to provide information on women and minorities in science and engineering.
The NSF mandates provide the basis for statistical programs in NCSES. The center is called on to support the collection of statistical data on research and development trends, the science and engineering workforce, U.S. competitiveness, and the condition and progress of the nation’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; to support research using the data it collects and on methodologies in areas related to its work; and to support the education and training of researchers in the use of its own and other large-scale, nationally representative data sets. NCSES designs, supports, and directs a coordinated collection of periodic national surveys and performs a variety of other data collections and research, providing policymakers, researchers, and other decision makers with high-quality data and analysis on research and development, innovation, the education of scientists and engineers, and the science and engineering workforce. NCSES also serves as staff to the National Science Board in producing the biennial congressionally mandated Science and Engineering Indicators Report, which uses data from all NCSES surveys.
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Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Administration
The Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES)18 is located in the Social Security Administration (SSA). ORES reports to the SSA Deputy Commissioner for Retirement and Disability Policy. ORES is headed by an Associate Commissioner (AC) who is a career senior executive service appointee.
SSA began as the Social Security Board in 1935; it became part of the Federal Security Agency in 1939, part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953, and part of HHS in 1980; it regained independent agency status in 1995. From the outset, SSA has had a research, statistics, and evaluation function. In accordance with provisions in the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, ORES’ AC is the agency Statistical Official and provides direction to a statistical unit (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019).
ORES produces numerous recurring statistical publications about the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs, such as the Annual Statistical Supplement. ORES also produces statistical publications about earnings and employment and other topics related to Social Security, such as the Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Program and Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security.
ORES conducts and sponsors research and evaluation on the effects of the Social Security and SSI programs and proposed changes in those programs on individuals, the economy, and program solvency. It develops and operates microsimulation models to assess the distributional effects of proposed reforms to the Social Security and SSI programs. ORES also conducts comparative analyses of social insurance systems in other countries. The research generated by ORES often is published in its in-house journal, the Social Security Bulletin. In addition, ORES funds the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), an interdisciplinary research program, through 5-year cooperative agreements.19 The RDRC promotes research on a wide range of topics related to Social Security retirement and disability policy at universities and think tanks.
Finally, ORES performs a significant data infrastructure function in support of policy research. ORES is responsible for working with outside research partners to create restricted-use research datasets by linking survey and other external data to Social Security program data. ORES also supports epidemiologists by providing vital status data on subjects of health research.20
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18 https://www.ssa.gov/policy/index.html
Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service
The Statistics of Income Division (SOI)21 is housed in the Office of Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The director is a career senior executive service appointee.
SOI’s history traces back to the enactment of authority to levy individual income taxes in the 16th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1913. Section 21 of the Revenue Act of 1916 mandated the annual “publication of statistics reasonably available with respect to the operation of the income tax law” (39 Stat. 776); identical language is found in the current Internal Revenue Code (see 26 USC 6108).
SOI provides income, financial, and tax information data products to the user community, comprising users in federal, state, and local governments, as well as in academia, the private sector, and the wider research community. These data products are based largely on individual tax returns, corporate tax returns, and returns filed by most tax-exempt organizations. SOI also provides periodic data derived from other returns and schedules, such as estate and gift taxes, foreign income and taxes, and gains and losses from sales of capital assets.
On written request, SOI tax return data are available to staff in the Department of the Treasury and the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation for policy analysis and revenue estimation. SOI data are also available to the Congressional Budget Office for modeling Social Security and Medicare programs, but not for any other purpose. Selected tax return data are also available, under strict confidentiality protection provisions, for use by the Census Bureau, BEA, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service for purposes of structuring censuses and national economic accounts and conducting related statistical activities authorized by law.
Recognized Statistical Units
Implementation guidance issued in 2007 for the 2002 Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA; see Appendix A) recognized the unique responsibilities of recognized federal statistical agencies.22 That guidance also provided a mechanism by which other agencies or units can be recognized as statistical agencies or units for the
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21 https://www.irs.gov/uac/taxstats
22 CIPSEA adopted the designation of 12 agencies from the Order Providing for the Confidentiality of Statistical Information, issued by OMB in 1997 (see Appendix A). The thirteenth agency, the SSA ORES, was recognized subsequently.
purposes of CIPSEA (Office of Management and Budget, 2007, p. 33368).23 As noted in Appendix A, the Evidence Act requires OMB to issue guidance on how agencies may be designated as statistical agencies or units (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019 § 3562(a)).
Using criteria from this implementation guidance, OMB recognized three statistical units: the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in HHS; the Microeconomic Surveys Section of the Federal Reserve Board; and the National Animal Health Monitoring System Program Unit of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.24 Descriptions of these statistical programs are presented below in alphabetical order. For the most current descriptions of recognized unit activities, see Statistical Programs of the United States Government (Office of Management and Budget, 2023a).
Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
The Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ),25 in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), is the lead federal government agency for behavioral health data and research.
In December 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act was signed into law and codified CBHSQ. CBHSQ conducts national surveys tracking population-level behavioral health issues. CBHSQ also provides statistical and analytical expertise; both activities support the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use and the Secretary of HHS.
CBHSQ maintains several data collection systems and surveys on key topics in U.S. behavioral health, including:
- The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which measures behavioral health indicators across the United States;
- The Behavioral Health Services Information System, which collects information on the U.S. behavioral health treatment system and
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23 In addition to the requirements for designation as a statistical unit spelled out in the quoted paragraph, Statistical Policy Directive No. 1 (Office of Management and Budget, 2014b) applies to recognized statistical units in addition to recognized statistical agencies. This directive requires a statistical agency or unit’s department to recognize the agency or unit’s independence from undue political influence (see Appendix A).
24 Through this implementation guidance, OMB also recognized the ORES of SSA, described in the prior section.
25 https://www.samhsa.gov/about-us/who-we-are/offices-centers/cbhsq
- connects people with substance use and mental health treatment through the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator; and
- The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), a nationwide public health surveillance system to monitor emergency department visits related to recent substance use, including those related to opioids. DAWN provides vital information on emerging substance use trends across the country.
CBHSQ coordinates an integrated data strategy, including annual data collection on the national incidence and prevalence of various forms of mental illness and substance use. CBHSQ promotes basic and applied research in behavioral health data systems and statistical methodology, designs and carries out special data collection and analytic projects to examine issues for SAMHSA and other federal agencies, and participates with other federal agencies in developing national health statistics policy.
CBHSQ also (a) provides centralized planning and management of program evaluation across SAMHSA in partnership with program-originating centers; (b) provides oversight and management of agency quality-improvement and performance-management activities; and (c) advances agency goals and objectives related to program evaluation, performance measurement, and quality improvement.
Microeconomic Surveys Section, Federal Reserve Board
The Microeconomic Surveys Section of the Division of Research and Statistics of the Federal Reserve Board (MSS)26 conducts research in a variety of areas, including consumer finances, financial markets, general applied microeconomics, survey methodology, and other statistical methodology.27 The section’s primary responsibility for the Federal Reserve Board is conducting the triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, which ascertains detailed information on families’ balance sheets, wealth, pensions, income, and demographic characteristics. To achieve this, a sample of families that hold disproportionately large amounts of assets is drawn from federal income tax records. This sample is combined with an area probability sample of households. The resulting surveyed sample provides improved national estimates of family wealth.
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26 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/rsmecs-staff.htm
27 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/rsmecs-staff.htm
National Animal Health Monitoring System Program Unit, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
The National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS)28 is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs and within the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Initially conceived in 1983 and developed through pilot studies, the USDA NAHMS program was officially established in 1989 and has since conducted national studies across a broad range of animal industries, in addition to smaller, targeted studies and reports. NAHMS studies focus on the health and management of U.S. domestic livestock, poultry, equine, and aquaculture populations, historically including beef cow-calf, beef feedlot, bison, broiler, cervid, dairy, equine, goat, sheep, swine, table egg, and turkey as well as multiple aquaculture species and a variety of small-scale livestock operations. NAHMS also conducts household animal-keeping studies that produce national estimates on the percentage of households that keep backyard livestock and poultry as well as periodic studies on death loss on livestock operations. NAHMS national study efforts relating to antimicrobial stewardship in livestock and poultry production support the USDA Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Strategy by improving understanding of the drivers of antimicrobial use. NAHMS studies are designed to provide up-to-date and trend information needed to monitor animal health and disease prevalence, support trade decisions, assess research and product development needs, answer questions for consumers, and set policy.
Other CFO Agencies with Statistical Officials
The Evidence Act established the Statistical Official role within each of the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act (CFO Act) agencies “to advise on statistical policy, techniques, and procedures” across the entire department or agency (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019 § 314(a)). Further, the act “made the role of Statistical Officials separate and distinct from the responsibility of OMB-Recognized Statistical Agencies and Units under […] CIPSEA […] to expand the federal government’s capacity to produce high quality evidence for policymakers” (Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, 2019, p. 2). The unique roles and responsibilities of Statistical Officials are set forth in memorandum M-19-23. Among these responsibilities, Statistical Officials participate in their agency data governance board and the ICSP (described in the next section).
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28 https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/nahms
Some of the 24 CFO Act agencies currently house one or more federal statistical agencies, and in those cases the statistical agency director serves as the Statistical Official (see Box B-1, below). In 13 other CFO Act agencies, no recognized federal statistical agency or unit exists. We briefly describe some of the statistical programs within each of these agencies below, in alphabetical order. For the most current descriptions of these programs, see Statistical Programs of the United States Government: Fiscal Years 2021/2022 (also known as the “Blue Book”; Office of Management and Budget, 2023b) and Statistical Officials: Highlights and Achievements 2023 (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e).
Department of Defense
The Department of Defense (DOD)29 is a source of federal current demographic, economic, health, and transportation statistics. The largest statistical program is the Office of People Analytics (OPA), which was created to utilize big-data analytics to better understand key components of service members’ career paths, and how policy or environmental changes affect the performance and composition of the DOD workforce.30 In 2023, “DOD established the Chief Digital and AI Officer (CDAO), which is also designated as the DOD Statistical Official, to advise DOD leadership, direct systematic DOD-wide strategy and policy, and champion the data- and AI-related changes to DOD programs and culture. In this role, the Official facilitates the integration and fielding of data analytics and AI capabilities across DOD” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 3).
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)31 is a source of federal safety, crime and justice, current demographic, and current economic statistics. DHS has statistical programs in several agencies. For example, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) collects entry data on nonimmigrants entering and denied admission to the United States and holds the Advanced Trade Analytics Platform—a service delivery model to allow for customized solutions to address unique analytical questions presented to CBP. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) evaluates victims’ satisfaction with emergency relief services and provides statistics on fires. The Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) collects and disseminates statistical information and analysis useful in evaluating the social,
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BOX B-1
Interagency Council on Statistical Policy Membership
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Division of Research and Statistics, Microeconomic Surveys Unita
- Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Servicea
- Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Servicea,b
- Department of Agriculture, National Animal Health Monitoring System, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Servicea
- Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysisa,b,c
- Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Censusa
- Department of Defenseb
- Department of Education, National Center for Education Statisticsa,b
- Department of Energy, Energy Information Administrationa,b
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statisticsa,b
- Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Qualitya
- Department of Homeland Securityb
- Department of Housing and Urban Developmentb
- Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statisticsa,b
- Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statisticsa,b
- Department of Stateb
- Department of the Interiorb
- Department of the Treasury, Statistics of Incomea,b
- Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statisticsa,b
- Department of Veterans Affairsb
- Environmental Protection Agencyb
- General Services Administrationb
- National Aeronautics and Space Administrationb
- National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statisticsa,b
- Nuclear Regulatory Commissionb
- Office of Management and Budget, Office of the Chief Statistician of the U.S.d
- Office of Personnel Managementb
- Small Business Administrationb
- Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statisticsa,b
- U.S. Agency for International Developmentb
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aDenotes a Recognized Statistical Agency or Unit.
bDenotes a Statistical Official.
cDenotes rotating assignment of Statistical Official among ICSP members collocated in the same department.
dDenotes the Chairperson of the Council.
SOURCE: Adapted from Interagency Council on Statistical Policy Charter, 2023. See https://www.statspolicy.gov/about/#icsp for most current version.
economic, environmental, and demographic impact of immigration laws, migration flows, and immigration enforcement.32
In 2023, “[t]he DHS Statistical Official worked with DHS leadership to formally establish the new […] OHSS” (formerly, the Office of Immigration Statistics). “The DHS Statistical Official manages the standardization of statistical data formats, sharing of statistical data assets, and publication of statistical analyses and data assets for all DHS homeland security data. The DHS Statistical Official also established a DHS Statistical Official Council, which representative Statistical Officials from each of DHS’s operational components, charged with supporting the DHS Statistical Official’s role in statistical data governance and with validating independent OHSS reports” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 4). In 2024, OHSS is working with DHS leadership and OMB to seek OMB recognition as a recognized statistical agency of the federal statistical system.
Department of Housing and Urban Development
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD; https://www.hud.gov/) is a source of current federal economic statistics. The largest statistical program is the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R), responsible for maintaining current information on housing needs, market conditions, and existing programs, as well as conducting research on priority housing and community development issues.33 PD&R funds the American Housing Survey (AHS), the Rental Housing Finance Survey (RHFS), the Survey of Market Absorption (SOMA), the Manufactured Housing Placement Survey (MHS) and, with the Commerce Department, the Survey of Construction (SOC), all of which are carried out by the Census Bureau. The Office of Housing and the Office of Public and Indian Housing also collect and analyze data in support of their programs, from which PD&R produces public-use versions of these data. In 2022 and 2023, the HUD Statistical Official ensured representation of HUD in the “[…] OMB Measuring SOGI Research Group, [which] contributed to the Federal Evidence Agenda on LGBTWI+ Equity, which led to the development of HUD’s SOGI Data Action Plan.” In addition, HUD staff participated in the White House Initiative on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders, the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity, and advanced work on HUD’s Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander data disaggregation (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 5).
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Department of the Interior
The Department of the Interior (DOI)34 is a source of federal statistics on energy and minerals; environment; and soil, forest, fish, wildlife, and public lands. The department’s largest statistical program is the U.S. Geological Survey, which conducts applied research on the environment and provides data on critical minerals, water, Earth sciences, the Landsat program, and ecosystems.35 Additional data and statistical programs are growing, including for Indian Country, climate, and infrastructure. In 2023, “[…] the DOI Statistical Official established a Statistics and Evidence Community of Practice within DOI, which is participating in working groups to help develop solutions for replicability of analyses, AI and statistics, improving communications with decision-makers, and more.” In addition, the Statistical Official has made progress in “identifying data needs and developing program baselining metrics across DOI” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 5).
Department of State
As part of the State Department’s Enterprise Data and Artificial Intelligence Council,36 the Statistical Official helps oversee the implementation of the department’s Enterprise Data and AI Strategies and their data and AI campaigns, policy, and data quality efforts. In 2023, “the Department’s DEIA Data Working Group, led by the Secretary’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, in consultation with the Statistical Official, released for the first time an interactive public dashboard, the DEIA Demographic Baseline Report, providing statistics on the Department’s workforce … by race, ethnicity, sex, disability, grade/rank, and job series/skill codes” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 6).
Department of Veterans Affairs
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)37 is a source of federal demographic and health statistics. VA has large statistical programs in the Veterans Health Administration and the Veterans Benefits Administration, but its centralized statistical program is the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics (NCVAS),38 which integrates VA’s data assets; oversees the
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36 https://www.state.gov/the-department-of-state-unveils-its-first-ever-enterprise-artificialintelligence-strategy/
implementation of VA data standards; develops descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytics on a broad range of topics about the veteran population and VA programs; and collaborates with other federal agencies to survey and analyze the veteran population. NCVAS “…developed and maintains an integrated data asset comprised of data from across VA, which removed data siloes and ensures re-use of data.” In 2023, the VA Statistical Official, under the authority of the VA Chief Data Officer, worked with VA leadership and stakeholders to help establish a Demographic Data Working Group (DDWG) under the VA Data Governance Council. The DDWG continues to develop recommendations for demographic data collection standards for VA, including sexual orientation, self-identified gender identity, and preferred pronouns. VA has since established an Enterprise Demographic Integration and Implementation (EDII) team led by VA’s Office of Information Technology to implement demographic data standards across VA data systems. This will include implementing recently published standards on race and ethnicity data collection (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e).
Environmental Protection Agency
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)39 is a source of environmental and natural resources statistics. The EPA collects, compiles, analyzes, and disseminates information about the state of the nation’s environment, including air quality; drinking, surface, and ground water; ecosystems; and the use and release of toxic or hazardous substances. Statistical programs address topics such as ambient air quality levels; emissions of pollutants; distribution and determinants of exposure to pollutants; potential effects of environmental hazards on human health, ecosystems, and welfare; and environmental justice. The EPA Statistical Official and the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) provide cross-agency support for statistical activities.
General Services Administration
The General Services Administration (GSA)40 provides a host of acquisition, technology, asset management, and other mission-support services to federal agencies. In 2023, the GSA Statistical Official worked with the GSA Office of Evidence and Analysis (OEA) to develop a Data Quality Assessment (DQA) framework to gauge the data quality of government-wide data assets and target areas for improvement. The assessment tool developed by
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the OEA was informed by the FCSM Data Quality Framework. The DQA was piloted in 2024, and the results presented to the GSA Evidence-based Data Governance Executive Board for consideration across all of GSA’s data assets. GSA also continues its work with FCSM to make open government data more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable through the FAIRness project.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)41 is a source of federal environmental statistics. NASA collects remotely sensed data on climate, weather, and natural hazards and supports the National Climate Assessment. In 2023, the NASA Statistical Official updated statistical methodology used for the NASA Instrument Cost Model (NICM), one of several tools NASA uses for cost and schedule estimating. The tool was improved by increasing the amount of statistical imputation utilized. Additionally, all existing Cost and Schedule Estimating Relationships (i.e., statistical regression analyses) were updated with new data, thereby improving the predictive capacity of the modeling platform (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, p. 8).
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)42 is headed by a five-member commission43 that formulates policies and regulations governing nuclear reactor and materials safety, issues orders to licensees, and adjudicates legal matters brought before it. The program offices ensure that the commercial use of nuclear materials in the United States is safely conducted and carry out inspection, enforcement, and emergency response programs for licensees. The NRC publishes reactor operations status, environmental review analysis, emergency preparedness and response data, and other high-value information to keep the public informed.
Office of Personnel Management
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM)44 is the focal point for providing statistical information about the federal civilian workforce. OPM’s FedScope is an online tool that allows customers to access and analyze-
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43 https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/commfuncdesc.html
the most popular data elements from OPM’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) Data Warehouse. In 2023, “[…] the OPM Statistical Official worked with agency leadership and the Data Governance Board to establish an enterprise-wide data strategy and several working groups to help foster a data-driven culture, implement a strong data governance framework, improve technology and standards, and deliver high-quality federal workforce statistics. These efforts complement the development of an enterprise analytics platform and consolidated data ecosystem” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024e, pp. 8–9).
Small Business Administration
The Small Business Administration (SBA)45 is a source of federal economic statistics. SBA supports and produces statistics on small business characteristics and contributions. In 2023, the SBA Statistical Official established a data science/statistical branch to support the Statistical Official function; established a contract vehicle for awarding additional statistical support services in support of evidence-building and continually seeks to establish collaborations to link data across multiple agencies to support evidence-building initiatives. Additionally, the Statistical Official provided leadership to “the development of the data layer of MySBA, a common framework for collecting and protecting administrative data, and generated an AI trustworthy strategy for unsupervised and supervised machine-learning into MySBA” in a manner to detect and prevent fraud. The Statistical Official also coordinated statistical activities with Census and other federal agencies to promote the use of administrative data.
U.S. Agency for International Development
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)46 leads international development and humanitarian efforts. The agency advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience. USAID conducts rigorous evaluations to track the progress, results, and effectiveness of international development programs.47 USAID’s Statistical Official is leading efforts to update USAID’s Development Data policy and to draft related rulemaking actions to provide USAID staff and partners with standards and guidance across the entirety of the data lifecycle, to include the collection, submission, and governance of quantitative data. In addition,
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the Statistical Official leads efforts to draft data risk assessment models and data sharing agreements guidance. This includes the creation of a Data Disclosure Review Team to formalize a new process for responsibly publishing data. The Statistical Official is also providing oversight for the Development Data Commons, a virtualized computing environment for statistical analysis of agency data.
Over 100 Other Statistical Programs
Across the federal system, other statistical programs produce and disseminate statistics in support of other mission areas. These programs conduct a variety of evidence-building functions, including program evaluation, scientific research, data collection, policy and program analysis, and the provision of funding and other support for external research. There are 109 statistical programs identified by OMB as conducting at least $3.0 million in annual statistical activities (Office of Management and Budget, 2023b).48
COORDINATION OF THE SYSTEM
Convening the ICSP and FCSM are key ways in which OMB coordinates the federal statistical system. Input from these groups informs emerging policy, methodological, and system-wide priorities. Federal statistical laws, regulations, standards, and guidelines are enforced through the information collection review process required under the Paperwork Reduction Act and other means. Additionally, the priorities and budgets of federal statistical programs of the U.S. government are reported to Congress annually, with few exceptions, in OMB’s Statistical Programs of the United States Government, commonly referred to as the “blue book” (Office of Management and Budget, 2023b). These priorities and budgets are also summarized in the President’s annual budget submission to Congress in the budget appendix Analytical Perspectives (Office of Management and Budget, 2024a). Each of these coordination mechanisms is described further below.
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48 Many other federal agencies and units conduct statistical activities within the Executive Branch; however, their direct funding for these activities does not meet the inclusion criteria for this report. In addition, there are numerous other federal agencies and units whose statistical activities are excluded from this annual compilation because they are not part of the Executive Branch. Among others, these include the Congressional Budget Office, which develops and applies projection models for the budgetary impact of current and proposed federal programs; the Microeconomic Surveys Section of the Federal Reserve Board, which compiles the widely used Flow of Funds report and other statistical series, and periodically conducts the Survey of Consumer Finances; and the Government Accountability Office, which uses statistical data in evaluations of government programs.
Interagency Council on Statistical Policy
The Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP) is chaired by the Chief Statistician of the United States. Originally established by OMB in the late 1980s, the ICSP was later authorized by the Paperwork Reduction Act in 1995.49 Among other actions, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act)50 expanded the ICSP to include 24 Statistical Officials (representing the 24 CFO Act agencies) and heads of the recognized statistical agencies and units (11 of whom are also Statistical Officials) for a total of 30 unique members, including the Chief Statistician of the U.S. 51
Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology
The Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) was founded in 1975 by the SSP Branch (formerly, the Office of Statistical Policy) in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to assist in carrying out SSP/OMB’s role in setting and coordinating statistical policy. OMB invited individual statisticians, economists, or statistical program managers working in the Executive Branch to participate as members of the FCSM based on their particular experience and expertise.52
The FCSM serves as a resource for OMB and the federal statistical system to inform decision making on matters of statistical policy and to provide technical assistance and guidance on statistical and methodological issues. The FCSM sponsors an annual conference (in partnership with the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics), hosts seminars and workshops (often in collaboration with partner organizations such as the Washington Statistical Society), writes reports aimed at the federal statistical system and the community, and creates subcommittees and interest groups focused on topics relevant to the federal statistical community. Among some of its notable products are the Data Protection Toolkit;53 Data Quality Framework;54 Best Practices in Nonresponse Bias
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49 https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ13/PLAW-104publ13.pdf (Paperwork Reduction Act, 1995)
50 https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ435/PLAW-115publ435.pdf (Information Quality Act, 2000)
51 https://www.statspolicy.gov/assets/files/ICSP%20Charter.pdf; https://www.statspolicy.gov/about/#icsp
52 https://www.fcsm.gov/about/charter/#signatures
53 https://nces.ed.gov/fcsm/dpt
54 https://www.fcsm.gov/assets/files/docs/FCSM.20.04_A_Framework_for_Data_Quality.pdf
Reporting;55 Measuring Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Sexual Characteristics;56 and the Equitable Data Toolkit.57
Information Collection Review
The manner by which data are acquired and statistics are produced and released by federal agencies is subject to the laws, regulations, standards, and guidelines established for federal statistics (see Appendix A). These policies are enforced by OMB through the information collection review process under the Paperwork Reduction Act (“Paperwork Reduction Act,” 1995), among other means. OMB issued Guidance for Surveys and Other Agency Information Collection Activities, among other guidance documents, to assist agencies in preparing information collection requests (see statspolicy.gov for more information).
Statistical Programs of the U.S. Government (“Blue Book”)
The Paperwork Reduction Act requires OMB to submit an annual report to Congress describing the priorities and budgets (requested in the President’s Budget, appropriated by Congress, and actually spent) for federal statistical programs. This report, known as the “blue book” is prepared by the Office of the Chief Statistician of the U.S. It includes detailed data on statistical agency, unit, or program direct funding,58 reimbursable and purchase programs, and staffing (Office of Management and Budget, 2023b).
For fiscal years 2021 and 2022, the total federal statistical system (FSS) budget request was approximately $7 billion each year. This was approximately $5 billion below the 2020 request, due to the cyclical nature of the 2020 Census, which accounted for approximately 54 percent of the total 2020 President’s Budget Request for the FSS. Looking at budget requests for the 13 recognized statistical agencies alone, the 2021 and 2022 President’s Budgets requested $3.7 billion and $3.5 billion of the total FSS requests (Office of Management and Budget, 2023b).
Figure B-2 depicts reporting relationships for the 16 recognized statistical agencies or units, from the relevant congressional appropriations subcommittee to the cabinet secretary and any other intermediate levels of
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55 https://www.fcsm.gov/assets/files/docs/FCSM%20NRBA%20Report%20062623.pdf
56 https://www.fcsm.gov/groups/sogisc/
57 https://nces.ed.gov/fcsm/edt/index.html
58 “Direct funding” covers congressional appropriations to an agency. Some agencies (e.g., the Census Bureau) carry out statistical activities for other agencies on a cost-reimbursable basis. The funding for these activities is allocated to the sponsoring agency and not to the data collection agency.
authority. (Note that the ICSP includes Statistical Officials of the 24 CFO Act agencies, 13 of whom are not (also) heads of these 16 recognized statistical agencies or units.)
Analytical Perspectives
Each fiscal year, the Office of Management and Budget prepares the Budget of the United States Government containing the Budget Message of the President, information on the President’s priorities, and summary tables. Accompanying this budget is Analytical Perspectives, which highlights “specified subject areas or provide[s] other significant presentations of budget data that place the budget in perspective.” This report includes “economic and accounting analyses, information on Federal receipts and collections, analyses of Federal spending, information on Federal borrowing and debt, baseline or current services estimates, and other technical presentations” (Office of Management and Budget, 2024a, p. ii).
Over the past several years, the Office of the Chief Statistician of the United States has authored an Analytical Perspectives chapter to highlight priorities of the federal statistical system and the role of the federal statistical system in generating data that the public, businesses, and governments need to make informed decisions. In FY 2025, particular emphasis was placed on efforts to deliver statistical products through a seamless system; building statistical capacity and investing in essential statistical infrastructure; and investing in new and updated statistical standards critical for the system to maintain comparable data interoperability.
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