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Why Federal Statistics Matter: Rob Santos on Trust, Data Integrity, and the Future of the Census
277 Plays2 hours ago
This is the final episode of 2026! I hope you have enjoyed the show this year and also hope you have a great holiday season and happy new year. In this episode, I sit down with former Census Bureau Director Rob Santos to talk about the state of federal statistics, what’s threatening the quality and independence of federal data, and why surveys like the American Community Survey and decennial census matter more than ever. We dig into how census data are collected, how political appointees interact with career staff, and why attempts to limit data collection or redefine who gets counted can undermine everything from policy to local decision-making. Rob also reflects on his approach to diversity, communication, and public engagement while leading the Census Bureau. We close by looking ahead at what modernization should look like for federal statistical agencies in the years to come.
Keywords: Census Bureau, federal data, Rob Santos, statistical agencies, data quality, survey response rates, American Community Survey, decennial census, federal statistics, data integrity, data collection, public trust, policy data, government surveys, uncertainty communication, demographic data, administrative data, data modernization
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Wishes
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Biz Podcast. I'm your host, Jon Schwabisch. It's the final episode of 2025. I hope you are set for a happy and healthy holiday season and new year.
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm looking forward to a little bit of R&R not having to produce these shows. Even though I do love it, it just takes a lot of time, lot of effort to get these things together. So I'm looking forward to a
Interview with Rob Santos
00:00:33
Speaker
little bit of a break. But before we get there, we have a very special episode For you, I am joined by Rob Santos, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, former colleague of mine at the Urban Institute, and just overall good guy. We talk about a lot of things that are facing the federal data and statistical agency ecosystem. We talk about his time at Census, and we talk about all the work that he's done to improve how the Census Bureau, for example, communicates their work
00:01:02
Speaker
to their target audiences and their stakeholders and policymakers.
Threats to Federal Data Systems
00:01:07
Speaker
And as we round out the year, it is important to know, it's important to recognize that the federal data and statistical agency system is under threat, either by data sets being taken down, surveys being stopped,
00:01:21
Speaker
or civil servants ah tasked with collecting or managing these agencies being fired or let go. And if we want to continue being able to inform our stakeholders, being informed as individuals, being informed as businesses, these are the data that we need. These are the data that we rely on to make decisions every day. And so defending This system is crucially important, not just to our own well-being, not just to our well-being of our families, the health of our families, but also to our economy and to the broader world. So I think this conversation with Rob is crucially important at this moment in time. I think you're going to learn a lot about how census does its work and how
00:02:06
Speaker
Rob, as a former director, thought about or thinks about how the Census Bureau
Life on the Ranch and Staying Involved
00:02:13
Speaker
conducts its work. And, of course, going forward, you know, none of these agencies are infallible. They have lots of ways that they can improve, things that they can modernize, things that they can change, data they can access. And so Rob's going to talk a little bit about that as well. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode. Thanks so much for tuning in to all the episodes this year. And I hope you have a happy new year and I will see you in 2026. And to round it out, here's my conversation with Rob Santos, former director of the U.S. Bureau of Census.
00:02:43
Speaker
Holy moly. It's been far too many years, Rob. i don't even remember how many years it's been. um Good to see you. Yeah, it's great to see you. And um but Okay, and so we're going to get into lots of good stuff about your role at Census, um but let's talk about what you're doing these days, relaxing down on the ranch in Texas. Doing a lot of that and a lot of suffering too. I mean, our nation is going through a lot.
00:03:12
Speaker
um And so in the midst of my quote retirement, I'm out here at the ranch, 150 miles west of Austin, Texas, enjoying the stars, the wildlife, the grandkids, doing a lot ranch type of stuff. I don't own animals, but I maintain wildlife and I do a lot of clearing of land and it's just always something to
Census Data Collection Integrity
00:03:41
Speaker
do. about
00:03:43
Speaker
But at the same time, I'm getting calls from you know past census employees, from stakeholder groups, from folks potentially doing litigation and such. And, you know, they ask for advice and what I think and I tell them. So I'm actually fairly active. I also do a bit of public speaking. I've had some pretty regular engagements to do keynotes at universities, at conferences, at nonprofit organization galas, those types. Right.
00:04:15
Speaker
So I do want to talk about the communication side because um you were kind of known, among other things, known for that at the Census Bureau. So I do want to talk about that. But I want to start the the conversation about um maybe giving listeners a sense of how census data are collected. In a couple of the previous episodes of the show, I talked to Erica Groshen and Bill Beach, who used to run the BLS, to talk about, like, the commissioner can't fake these job numbers, right? The the way the the president sort of accused Commissioner McIntyre.
00:04:48
Speaker
So can you give folks a sense of like how census data are collected and maybe give them reassurances that there aren't people there who can just start making things up to fake numbers and make things look better or worse under one administration versus another administration?
00:05:03
Speaker
Certainly, and I'll ah speak to two different aspects. The first being how data are collected by sort of the scientifically rigorous process by the career staff. And secondly, how a presidential appointee like the director or some of the other positions that are there, we have two other positions that were appointeeships.
00:05:30
Speaker
um how they interact with the Census Bureau career staff as far as data publication and what the numbers are and things of that go. So first, with regard to actual data collection, Census Bureau and all federal statistical agencies have a really high bar of scientific integrity and independence when it comes to um methodologies and how many, you know, how you knock on doors and things of that sort, where the only thing that can change that from outside of a scientific perspective would be if a law was passed, like the current threatening laws on ah potential legislation on limiting the number of calls, like two calls for a survey, that would be disastrous. So apart from those types of interventions, the career staff have full control over how data are collected, how they are processed, and the numbers that are crunched, in including the types of estimators, how you blend things. And then they publish the results without any interpretation. And there are some examples I can give where You can actually interpret numbers different ways. And I talked to the Census Bureau about that. So that so that's, i have high confidence that no appointee can embed themselves in the process of producing the numbers so that they come up differently than what they are.
00:07:08
Speaker
Mm-hmm. um then it comes Then there's the political appointees. And in our leadership roles, we're responsible for the agency and all the products. Interestingly, in order to preserve the scientific integrity and the independence of the career staff and the data that are collected, there is something called pre-decisional stuff.
00:07:37
Speaker
And so, for example, the numbers that come out of the economic directorate on gross domestic product or some of the economic indicators that are collected, producer price index, I believe is one.
00:07:54
Speaker
I, as director or any director would not be able to see them until the morning that they're released. We do not have that privilege. The same is true, but a little with a little bit more lead time for things like the results of the post-enumeration study that we released that showed undercounts of African Americans and Latinos and people in tribal lands and such, or the up the over and undercounts of different states.
00:08:27
Speaker
It was only a few days before their release, after everything was codified, tables were made, et cetera, that ah that the appointee then is briefed so that they know it's going to be released in a couple of days. And because of that, there's this notion that appointees do not have the privilege of seeing pre-decisional materials. They need to wait until they're finalized and then they they are allowed to review. We did that and I think that is a great practice. I think it still continues. I'm sure it still continues. um And it's an added protection.
00:09:10
Speaker
that exist both at BLS as well as at Census Bureau and all the federal statistical agencies. Yeah. um You mentioned one thing I wanted to to give folks ah another
Legal Challenges in Census Operations
00:09:22
Speaker
sense of how this works. Like specifically, there is pending legislation now on limiting how many calls the Census Bureau can conduct during a survey. and You just mentioned how that would be very problematic. Can you explain to people why that would be problematic and why census shouldn't just be allowed to, you know,
00:09:40
Speaker
keep calling people all the time? Well, first of all, because the taxpayer pays for data that we need as a nation to operate our governance and the the economy and community development, we need to make sure at the Census Bureau to have really good, solid, reliable, accurate data.
00:10:03
Speaker
And in order to do that, you simply can't ask people to participate and then whoever self ah decides to respond on their own after a call or two, you get so little data from that, that it's not reliable and it it will have inherent biases in it because the people that respond early on in a survey operation, are very different than the people that respond later on after you keep trying to to get inquiry to participate. And it's because of that that is's it's pretty much required that in order to reach the levels of data quality that are needed for official government statistics, that there needs to be repeated attempts to encourage participation. And you see that in the census, the American Community Survey, and all of the other 120 plus surveys, both economic and as far as businesses, as well as household and population surveys that are conducted. It's really, really important to do that. What would happen if you limited it to two is that our gold standard
00:11:16
Speaker
data collections like the American Community Survey would end up with a tiny response rate of maybe 20%, I'm guessing here, out of up in the 79, 80, 81% range. There's another discussion that is a little bit quiet in the last couple months, but but early on, the the president had suggested sort of creating an alternative decennial census or some other sort of census that wouldn't Uh, include people who are living in the country without, you know, legal authorization.
00:11:52
Speaker
Um, and, and we could debate the, the constitutionality of that, but neither of us are legal scholars. So I'll pass that by, but just to ask. I have an opinion. I'm sure you do. Okay. So I, so I do want your opinion, but I also, so I'd like to know what you think about that, but also, I mean, this is an issue that you were, that you were working on when you were at urban back in 2019, 2020 in the, in the administration then. I mean, so so maybe we could talk about the first part, which is why is this potentially problematic when when collect when trying to collect ACS data, CPS data, census data?
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. ah Okay. So let's start with this notion of having different types of counts. The the Constitution, I think, is pretty clear in the 14th Amendment that you count whole persons. And because of that,
00:12:46
Speaker
as far as the Census Bureau was concerned, up until the day I left, that was going to be the rule. And so it would literally take court litigation to change that. And I expect that if there are any attempts to change what numbers are presented to the president in 2030,
00:13:12
Speaker
that that there would be a fair amount of litigation prior to that. ah Interestingly, if you want a count of individuals who are only citizens or who are citizens plus documented immigrants with their green cards or whatever, um you really have to count everyone first.
00:13:36
Speaker
And then you have to find the individuals who you need to excise. Because if you don't, then it be you have two sources of error. You have...
00:13:48
Speaker
The source of error, did you really capture everybody you wanted to who were citizens undocumented and you really don't have a grasp on that? And then you'd have the group of folks who are undocumented that you need to excise from the counts and you, there's really, it's very, very difficult. It's not possible to get those counts. So the scientifically, the best way to do it is to count everyone and then figure out which among those need to be excised. Which gets to the point that I was going to make here, which is no matter what, I believe that if you're going to do a census, regardless of what any president wants is the count, you've got to start with counting everyone.
00:14:35
Speaker
Now you've also, if i if I recall correctly, so I believe that this was like 2019, 2020,
00:14:44
Speaker
you did a project here that the impact of not including people who are not citizens impacts the data for people who are citizens.
Threats to Statistical Agencies
00:14:53
Speaker
that you That you change the response rates, you change people's trust in the data. um So let me make this a broader question. like What do you think right now is the biggest threat to the federal data, federal statistical agency ecosystem?
00:15:08
Speaker
There are actually a couple of huge threats, the first of which is this notion of of creating efficiency through destroying infrastructure.
00:15:22
Speaker
So we've seen the National Center for Education Statistics essentially being gutted. There have been severe cuts at the National Center for Health Statistics.
00:15:32
Speaker
There are similar cuts in other eight federal statistical agencies, including a substantial brain drain from the Census Bureau as a result of pressure to reduce force by some percentage that I don't know has that occurred after I left.
00:15:50
Speaker
um So that that is a huge risk that we are facing in order to be able to maintain the quality of data that's needed in order to move forward and provide the nation with the data that that we deserve type of thing.
00:16:07
Speaker
um So that's that. Remind me of the question again, because there was one. Yeah, what are the threats to the federal statistical agencies? So you mentioned the sort of infrastructure changes of taking down certain teams or data sets. yeah the the second threat would be sort of legislation or executive orders that would alter statistics. So for example, the Secretary of Commerce advocated excising the, I believe it was,
00:16:42
Speaker
government employees from the unemployment rate or so something of that sort. yeah ah Those types of of fundamental changes that are politically motivated actually could do damage to our ability to understand who we are as a nation and to be able to govern and and have the economy grow.
00:17:02
Speaker
Right. Do you think it's a misunderstanding of how important the data ecosystem is to good governance and good policy, or is it just a political you know fight against you know whatever the political agenda might be? or Or again, do you think that there's just kind of maybe not a full understanding of of what these data are useful for and and how they're how important they are?
00:17:28
Speaker
Well, I hate to tell you, but I think it's both. yeah yeah okay I think there that there is a there is a heavy political influence on on scoring sort of victories or political power and then implementing means that affect the ability of federal statistical agencies to operate in the way that they need to.
00:18:00
Speaker
And that is the the issue of like shoot first and then aim later. And we're seeing that repeatedly going on in the federal statistical system in terms of of reductions in force, elimination of programs that are absolutely needed, things of that sort. like For example, the the National Crime Victimization Study that BGS that so Census Bureau collects.
00:18:27
Speaker
Now, this is the only national survey that captures victimization, that is, people who are victims of crime that don't report them to police. Well, it we happen to know that one of the most vulnerable groups that is subjected to the to to victimization are transgender people.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yet, Currently, we are not collecting SOGI data on the National Crime Victimization Survey. So we are um eliminating the ability to understand the victimization of some of the most vulnerable populations in our country. And it just makes zero sense. I don't understand why we're doing that.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah. So so it's ah it's a really good example. So let me let me just share sort of the way that I think about this. for people who I think for people who are not familiar with, you know, federal data or, or, or they think that these are, these are data that are just collected for, you know, researchers and academics in some, in some, you know, ivory tower somewhere. But the victimization survey is a good example of a data set that is used by local law enforcement around the country to figure out when they should send police out, where they should go, what are the hotspots for crime? What are the groups that are not likely to report crimes? And so these data are used. They're not just, I mean, I just, it it frustrates me a little bit because I feel like a lot of people think that these data are just sort of academic or abstract in some sense, but they're used by businesses and they're used by law enforcement.
00:20:11
Speaker
And i don't know, if maybe there's a better way that more organizations and people can make that case to you know, state and federal policymakers.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, ah well, ah there are a couple of things that are going on here. The first is that all federal surveys and data collections, whether they are done by the Census Bureau or other federal statistical agencies, are are embedded and motivated by statutes.
00:20:42
Speaker
Like Congress has said, we need the data in order to cover governance, right? Right. They also have incredibly powerful um ability to help the economy. So all of the there's this huge portfolio of economic surveys and economic indicators and data that are collected at the Census Bureau. In fact, most economic indicators, except for a few, the data are collected by the Census Bureau and then provided to whatever agency needs them, like whether it's Bureau of Economic Analysis or the the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as providing some of the Census Bureau's generate some on their own. um And those are incredibly valuable for international trade, for internal decisions by companies. And then when you put together the ah the various amounts of
00:21:43
Speaker
public like household and personal and health and all these other data together with the economic data, there are now tools like the the Census Business Builder that are incredibly helpful to entrepreneurs to create business cases that they can then go to the bank and say, here you know here's proof that My business will do well in this small little in in my little catchment area. Right.
00:22:14
Speaker
My economic zone or whatever.
Diversity and Communication at Census
00:22:16
Speaker
So it interpenetrates that all of these data interpenetrate society. And we have learned over the over the last half century or more to rely on these more and more, which is why. Number one, we got to keep collecting them. And number two, they need to be allowed to be collected accurately and reliably.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah. um So I want to switch gears a little bit. um When you were at Census, you were known for a variety of different things, obviously. i think from my perspective, the thing that I sort of saw you doing, the things that I read about you were your efforts on diversity and inclusion,
00:22:59
Speaker
within the Census Bureau staff and then more generally. And also on the communication side, it seemed like, and this is more of just a feeling of just being outside, but it seemed like, felt like you were out there a lot more than maybe previous directors. And so I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about both of those.
00:23:19
Speaker
um Maybe we start with the diversity piece in the Census staff and then also just the the work that folks do, and then we can do the communication side. okay I know this is like 2025. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I smile when you say that because in my mind and what I brought to the table was this notion that communications and DEI and all this stuff, they're all part of the same thing, which is pursuit of excellence and relevance in quality of data.
00:23:51
Speaker
and uh for dei because about the time that i arrived it became hyper politicized and so the first year i was there i was basically saying i am the champion of dei yeah and and once the political tags became so extreme that even internally people were like oh man you know what is all this shit forget my fring plant an adult show worked it yeah um I basically decided I would not use the letters DEI or say in the words diversity, equity or inclusion because you don't need them. in order to profess and talk about the value that different perspectives bring in terms of a conversation. so and And I would even use my Latino-ness to, you know, I would meet and I'd be briefed by the the Census Bureau staff on data collections, on strategy, on this and that, and I would provide my input. I wouldn't i wouldn't say, you need to do X. I'd say, here's something to think about.
00:25:04
Speaker
And I would offer a different perspective and show them that there is value in bringing other different people together, either be it internally within the Census Bureau, bringing different directorate folks from like the population estimates folks together with the privacy folks together with the race and ethnicity folks together with the economic folks, etc. to just talk about these different types of of issues that we're being faced with in terms of data collection or accuracy or new products or whatever. um And and i would just I would promote that. And then I'd show by example on how you could look at something, say a data so ah census bureau product and say, here's a different way of looking at that. And then the example that I would often give
00:25:56
Speaker
is the 2018 census
2018 Census Test and Citizenship Question
00:25:59
Speaker
test. I don't know if you remember that. There was a huge, um several hundred thousand maybe, a national survey that tested out the census form in two versions.
00:26:14
Speaker
Half the sample got the census form with the citizenship question in it, and half just got the regular form without the census bureau. And so they went out and they did this humongous survey. They put the you know did the results together. They did this.
00:26:33
Speaker
It was incredibly powerful significance test to see if there was a difference between the the responses in the forms and the participation rates with the sentencing leadership question versus without it.
00:26:48
Speaker
And guess what happened? No difference. Okay. No difference. Now, because they're the Census Bureau and they're, you know, the scientific integrity and transparency, they basically said, here's the test. Here's what we did. Here's the methodology. There's no statistical significance. End of story.
00:27:12
Speaker
I mean, that's just only only the the results, man. Right. um And the media, I don't know if you remember, the media grabbed it and ran and said, look, there never was a problem. What do you know? What's the issue here? Why are we debating this?
00:27:29
Speaker
And i at the Urban Institute, immediately wrote a blog that said, hey, time out. And I explained this to the Census Bureau, ah the leadership there about a year or two ago.
00:27:43
Speaker
I said, look, here's a situation where there's no statistical significance, that doesn't mean there isn't wasn't an impact. I said, my theory and what I believe happened is that after a year and a half,
00:27:59
Speaker
of all of this intense media pressure saying, look, citizenship question's coming. Immigrant, you know, ah families are going to be affected. They're not going to want to participate. You pastors telling their contributions, don't fill out the census form if it comes. um That impact was existed and was done at the time that the Census Bureau did their experiment.
00:28:26
Speaker
And so the impact was distributed out to both sides of the, you know, the folks with the foreign households, with the foreign houses, without the form. So naturally, when you when you do that, who's left only the people for whom it doesn't matter.
00:28:45
Speaker
And so that's why there was that was no difference. If you wanted to really see a difference, you should have done a survey prior to any of this media attention coming out and then do one afterwards and do it like a difference in differences, a smooth sense of both cases. And then you probably would have seen something. So I said, there's it just did not surprise me at all that there difference because that's what I would have expected. And interestingly, after the leadership heard that, especially some of the branch chiefs at the lower level, some of the researchers got together and they went back to some administrative data that they had on all of the sample and did an analysis. And I think it was...
00:29:29
Speaker
a a Dr. Brown at census and a Misty Hedgenus. And they determined that in fact, they're you know ah there were differences that were not able to be discerned through the census test alone.
00:29:47
Speaker
and and And whatever came up supported, they actually told me it supported my vision. of well wow yeah yeah That was kind of validating. but yeah But it it's ah it's a way of showing how you need div diverse perspectives, like the perspective that I have put out. Because otherwise, if you're self-contained in your little scientific bubble, you think only a certain way. Now, I took that to the next level because I knew that no census director had ever gone out and engage with the public.
00:30:22
Speaker
And we needed that after the 2020 experience in order to help restore trust among different types of communities and me being the first Latino director and such. And so I went everywhere that I possibly could. ended up in 30 states with like 600 different types of engagements and at cities and in rural areas and tribal lands, et cetera.
00:30:48
Speaker
And I, what I would do is I wouldn't go and say, oh, you need to trust us. and that yeah Instead, I started with the value proposition of the data saying, we have your data, you need to benefit from it. And that was the starting point of of basically coming to provide and then saying, we have data dissemination specialists that are here and I bring them with me.
00:31:12
Speaker
These guys will tell you what data you need for your community, for your problems. And they'll do seminars and they'll do this and they'll do that. And it was incredibly valuable to do that because ah what I would also tell the public is that, look, 2020 happened, you know, we it was COVID, but we managed to get through 2020 decennial census.
00:31:37
Speaker
But please understand, we could not have achieved the level of, you know, of quality in that census without you down at the level.
00:31:50
Speaker
And I told the Census Bureau staff. We cannot achieve the level of excel excellence that we need to to get the quality of data we need to without public participation, which is why engagement is so critical.
00:32:05
Speaker
And that's what I my time doing. And that kind of I don't know if you can see it from based on what I've said, but this idea of diverse perspectives, giving people having their voice heard not only internally, but externally with community engagement.
Communicating Statistical Uncertainty
00:32:21
Speaker
um that really leads to better data more relevant data, higher quality data, more accurate data.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um I want to ask you one more question on the communication side, which is a bit more niche, but that's what the that's what this podcast is about. I'm curious about your thoughts on communicating statistical uncertainty.
00:32:42
Speaker
You go to a census report and you see there's a table of the estimates and then there's the 95% confidence interval and you go to see this product or that product and there's standard errors the variances. And I'm just curious,
00:32:54
Speaker
you know How do you think about communicating you know that kind of statistical information, that kind of statistical language to you know a huge country or a world that doesn't always have that language and that those tools?
00:33:07
Speaker
I did it sort of in a circumventing type of fashion. So here here's how I did it. um Because everyone likes to focus on the decennial census, I used that as an example.
00:33:20
Speaker
And I said, I would tell you know you know tribal leaders and elected officials, you know governors who didn't like what would say, community organizations, Congress,
00:33:35
Speaker
I would say, look, there has never, ever been decennial census that has been perfect. It's impossible.
00:33:45
Speaker
Right. and And then I'd go further and say there's never been a census of a nation in the history of mankind that has been there. That it's just impossible to to achieve that. What you need them to be is good enough for the purpose that are that it is intended. And I said, for um for the US decennial census,
00:34:09
Speaker
we need sufficiently accurate numbers for 50 states to enable to fulfill the constitutional mandate for reapportionment.
00:34:22
Speaker
I said I am absolutely comfortable that the that based on what I've seen in terms of data quality and results and such, that the the apportionment for 2020 was a fair apportionment. The ah level of quality achieved was acceptable. Having said that, there were undercounts, right? In fact, severe undercounts. And I said, I would tell them, you know, think about it. You need 15 numbers of people, population for the apportionment.
00:34:58
Speaker
When you start looking at different subgroups and little geographies and things of that sort, what's happening is that the level of accuracy that that was achieved for those 15 numbers was the net, it was a net accuracy increase. from balancing two sources of error.
00:35:18
Speaker
Overcounts and undercounts. And when you get overcouns and undercounts together. So the people that we counted twice ended up you know making it for the people that we missed and things of that sort. ah so So I think that that helped them understand that we live in a world of errors. I'd also say, look, people don't need perfect accuracy in order to make decisions on data. They just need decently good data for the purpose intended. I said, you know, hey, we're all at a conference.
00:35:50
Speaker
You know, we want to go out to a restaurant. What do we do? Oh, we go over to one of the social media things. Or I can say the media companies now. You can go to Yelp. And you take a take a look, you know, here are the restaurants. and And so, you know, everyone knows that you take a look at those reviews. yeah And at one extreme, a chunk of those reviews are from the competition giving really bad reviews so that they can get it.
00:36:18
Speaker
And another chunk is from the employees or the staff or the owners who they want to make sure go there. And then in the middle, there's, you know, people just feel compelled. And so you look and you want to see a really large number with the recognition that the most spectacular reviews are from, you know, the folks that that have a vested interest and the the really bad ones are from the folks that don't. And you make decisions on dirty data.
00:36:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm. we live with that all the time. We, you know, you know, So we shouldn't be afraid of the uncertainty that are associated with official statistics. They're inherent. They're part of it. If you want to do it a deep dive into it, you can you know take some statistical mumbo jumbo classes type of thing and say, oh, there's a margin of error, plus or minus. But the bottom line is just understand that nothing is perfect and that it's still good enough for you to be able to gain some insight and knowledge by looking at them.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's terrific. um I have one more question for you before we go. um We've done a lot of sort of looking back, um and I'd like to ask you to look forward, um and and we'll try to go above the politics, as it were.
Modernizing Federal Statistical Agencies
00:37:34
Speaker
But what do you think the federal statistical agencies, the system, needs to do or should be thinking about to sort of modernize for the, like you said, there's always error. But where should modernization or reforms happen the 21st century?
00:37:53
Speaker
Well, they're already happening. And I'm, you know, I wrote an article in the Journal of Official stat Statistics that talked about the challenges facing the the the the Bureau of the Census, but they they really apply to all of federal statistical agencies.
00:38:12
Speaker
And I liken the current situation where some agencies are being gutted There is now, I believe in the in the fiscal year 26 budget, if it ever gets passed, yeah there will there will be a mushing together of the BLS, the Bureau of Economic, BEA, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau. right so They'll be combined.
00:38:45
Speaker
um and into one agency, that's going to have some drastic impacts. So so I likened what was going on to sort of a natural disaster, a hurricane. They're going through and it's, you know, in, if you recall the mexico in Florida, there was a huge hurricane, Mexico Beach or whatever. It destroyed like 80 or 90% of all the homes because they had been built in the 1960s.
00:39:14
Speaker
And there were a few that were standing because they had been built to F category four standards. Well, there's going to be a rebuilding. And guess what? Folks aren't going to rebuild back to the 1960 standards. They're going to rebuild to the new standards.
00:39:28
Speaker
Right. Okay, right now we're being gutted as far as federal statistical agencies. It's going to pass. This administration will pass. It will move on and there will be new administrations. There will be a new opportunity to rebuild the federal agencies. They should not be rebuilt in the way they were before. There should be a vision for should we do more combining? You know, there's BLS, BEA, and Census. What about other agencies? NCES doesn't no longer exists. Should that type of function be there? What about other agencies? How can, you know, should there be um a migration towards more of the Stats Canada model of a one statistical office that brings things together? Those types of thoughts and discussions need to be going on right now in anticipation of the building rebuilding process that's going to come on the other side of the current natural disaster that's going on. Part of that will be not just how do what does the infrastructure look like, But what are the data and what are the data products look like?
00:40:39
Speaker
There's no question that people are more and more reluctant to participate service, which brings in this notion of blending data blending both the survey data that are collected and the administrative data that already exist so that you don't have to burden people. Now, it's not as simple as, oh, we do a survey and we do administrative data and let's put the two together. that it it needs to be It will need to be more strategic in a future modernization where you basically harvest the easy data that you can, which is from administrative data, you see what the gaps that are missing because you know there are segments of the population that do not want. And it's not just undocumented immigrants. it's like
00:41:29
Speaker
It's folks in rural areas like leave me alone and don't tax me. There are places like that in in different urban areas and such. So there will be gaps, and that's where then you send people out to collect raw data that you otherwise would not be able to have to fill in the gaps that the administrative data have, or to help inform and build better estimates. So I see a lot of future blending of data in order to get some of the classical survey data that congras Congress mandates be collected.
Future of Statistical Data Products
00:42:06
Speaker
But the the real exciting piece for me that was ongoing at the Census Bureau, and I think in other federal statistical agencies too, but I saw it directly, is this being able to take advantage of blending together in a an enterprise-level data lake. Mm-hmm. the geographic frame to to create new data products like the Community Resilience Estimates product or the MyCommunity Explorer or the Census Business Builder. These are really, really exciting products that make it very easy if you're interested in your neighborhood or if you're interested in your city or your county or your rural area. it makes it really easy for people to come in grab data that's both economic and public ah health and household data demographic data and be able to create insights and make assessments of like you know what are you know what it is it worthwhile building a school here or yeah putting a factory here uh or or whatever i think that's the future uh and i'm really really excited about
00:43:26
Speaker
Okay. I love ending on the optimistic note. So we'll see what will happen. I know there's a lot of efforts going on around the country and we'll able to be a part of it. Rob, great to see Thanks for coming on the show.
00:43:38
Speaker
Always good to talk. Yeah, it's always good to talk. I just had a great time. Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you again. Thanks for tuning in everyone. Hope you enjoyed that conversation. Hope to check out the links in the show
Conclusion and New Year Wishes
00:43:52
Speaker
notes. You can check them out at Zencastr, YouTube, policyvis.com, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts. And if you have a little of time over the break, you're getting little relaxation.
00:44:03
Speaker
You're in doing some some bed rotting there. Take a moment. Go on over to iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get your shows. And ready to review the show. Let me know how I'm doing. And i hope you have a great holiday season. I hope you have a great new year. And I look forward to what brings us together in 2026. So until next time, until 2026, this has been the Policy of His Podcast.
00:44:24
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening.