Video: A Feel For Numbers

"What if we fought terrorism using hard data instead of gut feelings and partisan politics?" That's the question Zack Phillips asked in a feature story in the Oct. 1, 2007, issue of Government Executive. After all, the Labor Department has the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Commerce Department has the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Agriculture Department has the National Agricultural Statistics Service. But The State Department doesn't have its own in-house statistics office. Now Phillips has followed up with video presentation looking at how the federal government has used -- and abused -- data in countering the terrorist threat: