Those interested in the work of US statistical agencies, their international counterparts, or topics related to their work might want to dive into this Stats+Stories podcast episode list.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
The United States Needs to Fill the Gaps in Its Crime Statistics
Janet L. Lauritsen says the US lacks sufficient data for many types of crime of great concern to society, and this is particularly the case for crimes falling under federal jurisdiction.
Meet Alex Piquero, Head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics
Alex R. Piquero was appointed by President Joe Biden in June of 2022 to serve as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics and sworn in August 15, 2022.
Establishing and Maintaining Trust in a Federal Statistical Agency: A Discussion from the National Academies
The Office of Management and Budget, Congress, and National Academies deem professional independence necessary for an agency to establish trust in its products. Professional independence includes an agency’s autonomy over its budget, information technology, hiring, publications, contracting, and data collection and analysis. To further the understanding of the importance of statistical agency autonomy, we include the autonomy portions of a discussion between Robert Groves and Hermann Habermann, James Lynch, and Charles Rothwell.
State of the Criminal Justice Data Infrastructure
ASA’s Count on Stats team spoke with three former BJS leaders about their perspectives on the state of criminal justice statistics.
ASA, COPAFS, Partners Urge Bolstering of Federal Statistical Agencies
Federal statistics have undergirded our democracy, society, and economy since the nation’s founding. Even as their importance has increased over the centuries—especially recently with the focus on evidence-based policymaking—the agencies producing the data have been neglected, lost important autonomy and statutory protections, and been pushed deeper into the federal bureaucracy.
FY21 Federal Budget Finalized
![Figure 1 shows the budgets of the seven mid-sized statistical agencies normalized to their FY09 levels, along with the GDP deflator to account for inflation. Budget restructuring for ERS in FY15 and ORES in FY19 are accounted for in the graph to allow for comparison over this time period. One-time moving costs in FY16 for BEA are also omitted. [Key: BEA, Bureau of Economic Analysis; BJS, Bureau of Justice Statistics; BTS, Bureau of Transportation Statistics; ERS, USDA Economic Research Service; NCSES, NSF National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics; ORES, Social Security Administration Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics; SOI, IRS Statistics of Income Division]](https://magazine.amstat.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FY_Figure1_-150x150.jpg)
The NIH, NSF, and several federal statistical agencies received increases, but many are facing fiscal challenges after years of purchasing power loss.
Iowa State Student Wins Jackson Smith Scholarship
Sepideh Mosaferi, a PhD student in the department of statistics at Iowa State University, is the winner of the Government Statistics Section’s 2020 Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship.
Jeri Mulrow
Jeri Mulrow turned in her first statistics book after the semester thinking it was boring. Her college adviser insisted she take more statistics classes, however, including regression, analysis of variance, and design of experiments. She was hooked after that. Today, Mulrow has more than 30 years of experience in applied statistics, working in various occupations and for several federal agencies. She and her husband recently set up a scholarship fund in statistics and data science at Colorado State University, their alma mater.
FY17 Requests for NIH, NSF, Federal Statistical Agencies Largely Positive
President Barack Obama’s requested budget for Fiscal Year 2017 maintains his record of proposing generally healthy increases for the NIH, NSF, and many federal statistical agencies, but realizing increases of any amount will be challenging.