A House Government Reform Subcommittee on Wednesday approved a bipartisan bill that aims to improve the quality and efficiency of the federal government's statistical data systems.
The "Statistical Efficiency Act of 1999" (H.R. 2885), which the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology approved by voice vote, would streamline a patchwork of laws governing federal statistical data, and allow different federal agencies to share that data. It also would establish uniform rules to protect the confidentiality of data submitted to federal agencies for purely statistical purposes.
Subcommittee Chairman Steve Horn, R-Calif., said the federal government's current statistical structure is an assortment of 70 different programs in 12 cabinet departments. Horn said the various statistical programs are governed by a wide array of laws that lack uniformity and limit agencies' ability to share data with other agencies.
"This fragmented structure compromises the quality of statistical data and forces agencies to spend resources on duplicative bureaucratic overhead," Horn said.
Horn said the mishmash of rules also is burdensome for businesses and individuals who are required to provide the federal government with data. For example, he said, the Census Bureau keeps a list of all U.S. businesses, as does the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Businesses must submit the same data to both agencies because current rules prevent the agencies from sharing the information.
The bill would allow agencies to share statistical data with other agencies, but only for purely statistical reasons. Agencies obtaining statistical data from other agencies could not use the data for any other purpose, such as regulatory enforcement.
"It is no exaggeration to say that the quality of the decisions made by the federal government rely on the quality of these statistics," Horn said.
The bill also would select eight federal agencies-including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis-to serve as "statistical data centers," which would share data to improve federal statistical programs, and identify ways to eliminate duplicative rules and increase efficiency within the federal statistical data structure.
During Wednesday's meeting, the subcommittee approved, by voice vote, an amendment in the nature of a substitute by Horn. The substitute clarified that any data acquired for exclusively statistical purposes cannot be disclosed to another agency in any identifiable form, for any non-statistical purpose, without the informed consent of the organization or individual who originally submitted the data.
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