2013 Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll

Provides a comprehensive look at the employment of the nation’s state and local governments, as well as the federal government. It shows the number of government civilian employees and their gross payroll by governmental function. These governmental functions include, for example, elementary and secondary education, and police protection. Internet address: <http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/2013_summary_report.pdf>.

Updated Public Authority Payrolls Posted Online

Updated payroll files for Public Authorities have been posted on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center's government transparency web site for taxpayers. The new data includes names, titles, base pay rates and total pay received for the 59,979 public authority employees added this week.
The full text of this press release is available here.

Richard Nathan's "Social Science in Government"

Richard P. Nathan's book Social Science in Government uses rich histories of prominent policy issues and descriptions of major studies of welfare and job programs to bring to life crucial questions about how social science can best serve social policy. Nathan, who recently retired from the Rockefeller Institute after 20 years as its director and co-director, is a social scientist who spent many years conducting evaluation studies of what works — and what doesn't work — in domestic public affairs. The book presents a lively retrospective account of a career as an insider and outsider in American government and academe.
The Institute has now made Social Science in Government available in its entirety online. You can find it here.

The public comments on the web about ACS

An Indiana data detective has been been browsing the web to see what news and information is out there about the American Community Survey, noting that "Google yields about 2 million items when searching for American Community Survey and the top links are to the Census Bureau. However, on the first results page there are a number of blogs referenced that purport to be reactions from recipients of the survey..."

Here is just one of the many links found.

It appears that there is a great deal of concern about the "intrusiveness" of the ACS and about privacy, "difficult to assuage in the face of modern technology and general mistrust of 'the government'."

I believe that the Census Bureau, which has little money to publicize the ACS program at all, nevertheless needs to find a way to address these issues. I remember a conversation I had four or five years ago with a data detective. I posited the theory that the USA “PATRIOT” Act and other activities would undermine Census' capacity to gather information in the future. That understandably suspicious future is now.

The data gathered in the ACS, and before that in the long form of the Census, is vitally important to government and industry. Of course, the "short form" questions are required for reapportionment of Congress and state legistures, as well as a myriad of other uses.