Official Statistics

Official Statistics, disseminated through Federal Statistical Systems, provide vast amounts of demographic and economic information about the world. These measures shape the make-up of governments and the distributions of federal funding—$1.5 trillion in the U.S.—for services that impact the health and well-being of the population. They guide economic and educational development, determine our level of innovation, and influence our infrastructures: roadways, schools, hospitals, and emergency management.

Today, Federal Statistical Systems seek to go beyond their traditional survey-based research approaches and leverage data science capabilities and methods to manage, analyze, and extract knowledge from the volumes of data as a result of the data revolution. We are doing just that with the U.S. Census Bureau and in collaboration with U.S. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

Our focus is on assessing the feasibility of using non-survey data flows – administrative, private sources, opportunity and procedural data – to supplement or enhance current development of Official Statistics. Collaborating with our agency partners, our team of experts discover new data sources and repurpose them to measure any number of concepts for the establishment of important national science policy indicators, such as innovation, entrepreneurship and competitiveness.