COPAFS Corner
COPAFS Focuses on Statist ical Activities
C
OPAFS is the Council of Professional activities, and make their own innova- Economic Research Service at the U.S.
Associations on Federal Statistics tion findings available to researchers. The Department of Agriculture. The program
and comprised of the membership importance of collaboration was a recurring is a response to the increase in the demand
of more than 60 organizations, including theme and was reflected in the secretary’s for data access and the growing concern for
professional associations, businesses, research call for a series of forums on innovation and confidentiality and disclosure avoidance.
institutes, and others interested in federal the impediments to innovation. The first Among current data access “modalities,”
statistics. As a member of COPAFS, the forum was held March 17 in Kansas City. Bowie described public use files as provid-
ASA has two representatives from the Landefeld noted that BEA’s traditional ing high quality, but lacking in timeliness
Government Statistics Section who repre- economic measures only account for a por- and access to linked microdata. Licensing
sent the association by attending COPAFS’ tion of economic growth and that the miss- options involve issues with security and no
quarterly meetings and reporting back to ing portion has been regarded as growth in linked data. Research data centers are expen-
the membership. Highlights of the March 7, knowledge and productivity, but remains sive to establish, inconvenient for most users,
2008, meeting held at the Bureau of Labor something of a puzzle and could be con- and inaccessible for many users. As Bowie
Statistics follow. sidered a residual measure of innovation. described it, the “ideal system” would be
Arguing that residual measures can be mis- secure, flexible, low-cost, and able to meet
Innovation Measurement
leading, Landefeld commented that direct replication standards (providing metadata
Cynthia Glassman, undersecretary for eco- measures are needed and described work and other resources necessary to enable the
nomic affairs at the U.S. Department of BEA is doing with the Bureau of Labor replication of results). It is this ideal that
Commerce, was joined by Chief Economist Statistics (BLS) to investigate and reconcile NORC is striving for in the data enclave.
Joe Kennedy and Steve Landefeld of the differences between the agencies’ data on the NORC Project Director Tim Mulcahy
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to performance of the economy. Data synchro- described the security concerns and how
describe the work of the department’s nization is a major part of this effort. they are dealing with them. He listed some
Advisory Committee on Measuring Joe Kennedy described incentives for of the confidential data collected by NORC
Innovation in the 21st Century Economy. data sharing, but with penalties for disclo- to illustrate their variety and the point that
Charged with identifying how to mea- sure. Specifically, he described proposals to no single approach is ideal for all. Instead,
sure innovation, the committee—estab- share and reconcile differences in the BEA they take a portfolio approach. Physical
lished in September 2006—includes cor- and BLS business lists. After meeting with data protection is achieved with VPN tech-
porate CEOs, researchers, and academic congressional staff members, the agencies nology and layers of authentication. When
experts. At the committee’s first public are crafting a proposal they hope will pass the authorized user dials up the enclave,
meeting in February 2007, it became on the Hill. The proposal calls for BEA to their computer becomes a “dumb terminal”
apparent there is no magic number or sin- gain access to noncorporate tax data—the with normal capabilities (e.g., print, cut,
gle index that captures the elusive notion of thinking being that small (i.e., noncorpo- paste, etc.) disabled. There is also software
innovation. When asked how they measure rate) companies account for a dispropor- to track what researchers are doing and to
innovation in their companies, CEOs men- tional share of the services sector associated detect anything inappropriate. There are
tioned increasing market share in a growing with innovation. The proposal also would legal, statistical, operational, and educa-
market and developing new products and allow the U.S. Census Bureau to share its tional elements to security protection, and
services, while the academic members had federal tax information to promote the rec- the protections can be applied with flexibil-
their own views. A second public meeting onciliation of differences with BEA data. ity—different levels of protection for differ-
was held in September 2007, and a report, Kennedy expressed hope the proposal will ent data files, established in collaboration
released in January 2008, is available at pass within the next few months. with the data producer. Users are required
www.innovationmetrics.gov. to sign confidentiality agreements, and
The report recommends innovation
National Opinion Research
there are heavy fines for violations.
measures be practical, use information Center Data Enclave Mulcahy described the importance of
companies already have, and minimize
Chet Bowie of the National Opinion Research user education and summarized the goals
burden. It recommends further that gov-
Center (NORC) described the data enclave of the program as adding value to the data,
ernment create a stronger framework for
as a “virtual collaboratory,” and explained reducing costs of analysis, facilitating the
measuring innovation, better leverage exist-
it as a system to provide remote access to publication and visibility of results, and
ing data (such as data on services), increase
sensitive microdata files in a confidential- creating value for future research (user feed-
access to relevant data, and promote greater
ity protected environment. Opened in July back to data producers). He identified soft-
“data synchronization,” or data sharing.
2007, the enclave provides access to data ware applications available in the enclave
The report recommends businesses create
from the National Institute for Standards (e.g., Microsoft Office and SAS) so users do
industrial- and firm-level innovation mea-
(NIST), the Kauffman Foundation, and not need to know technical languages and
sures, participate in innovation research
the National Agricultural Statistics Service/ he described a “data custodians” function
MAY 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 17
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