Statistical Policy Directive No. 3: Compilation, Release, and Evaluation of Principal Federal Economic Indicators. Timing of Public Comments by Employees of the Executive Branch, 14682-14684 [2019-07172]
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Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 70 / Thursday, April 11, 2019 / Notices
estimated for an average respondent to
respond:
Average
reporting time
(min)
Total burden
hours
Purpose of contact
Mail, Fax, Email, telephone ............................
Email and telephone .......................................
84
84
75
2
105
3
Email and telephone .......................................
Data collection ................................................
Verify facility operational status and point-ofcontact.
Data quality follow-up validation ....................
84
7
10
Total .........................................................
.........................................................................
84
84
118
The questionnaire will be sent to 84
Indian country correctional facilities
operated by tribal authorities or the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Based on
prior years’ reporting, we estimate a
reporting time of 75 minutes for the SJIC
questionnaire. If needed, jail
respondents will also be contacted by
email or telephone to verify data quality
issues. Thus, we expect that in any data
collection year 84 SJIC respondents will
have an average reporting time of 2
minutes to verify facility operational
status and point-of-contact, 75 minutes
for the data collection, and an
additional 7 minutes for data quality
follow-up validation, for a total burden
84 minutes per facility. Annually, this
results in a total burden estimate for
SJIC of 118 hours.
If additional information is required,
contact: Melody Braswell, Department
Clearance Officer, United States
Department of Justice, Justice
Management Division, Policy and
Planning Staff, Two Constitution
Square, 145 N Street NE, 3E.405A,
Washington, DC 20530.
Dated: April 8, 2019.
Melody Braswell,
Department Clearance Officer for PRA, U.S.
Department of Justice.
[FR Doc. 2019–07167 Filed 4–10–19; 8:45 a.m.]
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OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND
BUDGET
Statistical Policy Directive No. 3:
Compilation, Release, and Evaluation
of Principal Federal Economic
Indicators. Timing of Public Comments
by Employees of the Executive Branch
Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, Office of
Management and Budget, Executive
Office of the President.
ACTION: Notice of solicitation of
comments.
AGENCY:
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Number of
responses
Reporting mode
Under the Budget and
Accounting Procedures Act of 1950 and
the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995
SUMMARY:
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Jkt 247001
(‘‘the PRA’’), the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) issues a request for
comments on the continued relevance of
one provision within Statistical Policy
Directive No. 3: Compilation, Release,
and Evaluation of Principal Federal
Economic Indicators (50 FR 38932, Sep.
25, 1985) (‘‘Directive No. 3’’). Directive
No. 3 remains a robust, comprehensive
source of guidance for statistical series
produced by Federal statistical agencies
and recognized statistical units. The
government and private sector widely
watch and heavily rely upon those
statistical series as indicators of the
current condition and direction of the
economy. The procedures in Directive
No. 3, published in 1985, were designed
to ensure equitable, policy-neutral, and
timely release and dissemination of
Principal Federal Economic Indicators
(‘‘PFEIs’’). The goals of Directive No. 3
remain sound, and changing those
overall goals is not the subject of this
notice; however, advances in
information dissemination technology
lead OMB to seek comment on the
continued relevance of the provision
that prohibits employees of the
Executive Branch from commenting
publicly about the release of PFEIs until
at least one hour following their release.
For example, in addition to more
traditional means of dissemination (e.g.,
newspaper or radio), agencies now
disseminate their data releases to the
public through the internet, including
on their own websites, allowing
instantaneous and equitable access to
the releases. In particular, OMB seeks
comment on whether advances in
information dissemination technology
since Directive No. 3’s issuance in 1985
could provide for meeting the goals of
Directive No. 3 to ensure equitable,
policy-neutral, and timely release and
dissemination of PFEIs under a shorter
time delay, including no time delay at
all.
Additional discussion of the request
for public comment may be found in the
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section
below.
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Electronic Availability: This notice is
available on the internet on the OMB
website at https://www.whitehouse.gov/
omb/. Federal Register notices are also
available electronically at https://
www.federalregister.gov/.
To ensure consideration of
comments on this Notice, they must be
received no later than 60 days from the
publication date of this notice. Because
of delays in the receipt of regular mail
related to security screening,
respondents are encouraged to send
comments electronically (see
ADDRESSES, below).
DATES:
Comments may be
addressed to: Nancy Potok, Chief
Statistician, Office of Management and
Budget, fax number (202) 395–7245.
Email comments may be sent to
Statistical_Directives@omb.eop.gov,
with the subject ‘‘Directive No. 3.’’
Alternatively, comments may be sent
via www.regulations.gov—a Federal EGovernment website that allows the
public to find, review, and submit
comments on documents that agencies
have published in the Federal Register
and that are open for comment. Simply
type ‘‘OMB–2019–0001’’ (in quotes) in
the Comment or Submission search box,
click Go, and follow the instructions for
submitting comments. Comments
received by the date specified above
will be included as part of the official
record.
Comments submitted in response to
this notice may be made available to the
public through relevant websites. For
this reason, please do not include in
your comments information of a
confidential nature, such as sensitive
personal information or proprietary
information. If you send an email
comment, your email address will be
automatically captured and included as
part of the comment that is placed in the
public docket. Please note that
responses to this public comment
request containing any routine notice
about the confidentiality of the
communication will be treated as public
comments that may be made available to
ADDRESSES:
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Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 70 / Thursday, April 11, 2019 / Notices
the public notwithstanding the
inclusion of the routine notice.
For
information about this request for
comments, contact Kerrie Leslie, Office
of Management and Budget, 9215 New
Executive Office Building, Washington,
DC 20503, telephone (202) 395–1093,
email Statistical_Directives@
omb.eop.gov with the subject ‘‘More
Info: Directive No. 3.’’
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background: The Nation relies on the
flow of relevant, accurate, timely,
reliable, and objective statistics to
support the decisions of governments,
businesses, individuals, households,
and other organizations. Federal
statistical agencies release many of the
statistics available about the United
States’ economy, population, natural
resources, environment, and public and
private institutions. It is the
responsibility of Federal agencies
engaging in statistical work to support
the quality and accessibility of the
Federal statistical information our
Nation uses to monitor and assess
performance, progress, and needs. In its
role as coordinator of the Federal
statistical system under the PRA, OMB,
among other responsibilities, is required
to ensure the efficiency and
effectiveness of the system. A key
method OMB uses to achieve this
responsibility is the promulgation,
maintenance, and oversight of
Government-wide principles, policies,
standards, and guidelines concerning
the development, presentation, and
dissemination of statistical products.
OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive
Nos. 3 and 4 are designed to preserve
and enhance the objectivity and
transparency, in fact and in perception,
of the processes used to release and
disseminate the statistical products of
Federal statistical agencies. The
procedures in these directives are
intended to ensure that statistical data
releases adhere to data quality standards
through equitable, policy-neutral, and
timely release of information to the
general public.
The preamble to Statistical Policy
Directive No. 4 (‘‘Directive No. 4’’)
summarizes the history of Directive No.
3 as well as the long-standing concern
about the need to maintain public
confidence in the objectivity of Federal
statistics. For example, in 1962, the
President’s Committee to Appraise
Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, stated: 1
amozie on DSK9F9SC42PROD with NOTICES
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
1 ‘‘Measuring Employment and Unemployment.’’
U.S. President’s Committee to Appraise
Employment and Unemployment Statistics.
Transmitted September 27, 1962. p20.
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The need to publish the information in a
nonpolitical context cannot be
overemphasized. * * * a sharper line should
be drawn between the release of the statistics
and their accompanying explanation and
analysis, on the one hand, and the more
general type of policy-oriented comment
which is a function of the official responsible
for policy making, on the other.
In 1971, the Administration was
widely criticized for the way it publicly
characterized some Bureau of Labor
Statistics unemployment data at the
time of their release. In response, the
Congress instituted the monthly Joint
Economic Committee hearings on the
unemployment rate, and OMB issued
Directive No. 3 to provide guidance to
Executive branch agencies on the
compilation and release of PFEIs.
Directive No. 3 provides for the
designation of statistical series that
provide timely measures of economic
activity as Principal Economic
Indicators, and requires prompt but
orderly release of such indicators. The
stated purposes of Directive No. 3 are to
preserve the time value of the economic
indicators, strike a balance between
timeliness and accuracy, provide for
periodic evaluation of each indicator,
prevent early access to information that
may affect financial and commodity
markets, and preserve the distinction
between the policy-neutral release of
data by statistical agencies and their
interpretation by policy officials. Thus,
Directive No. 3 is designed to promote
public confidence in Federal statistics
and in the system responsible for their
production, as well as trust in the
purely statistical basis of PFEIs used in
the Federal Government’s policy
decisions.
Since OMB’s publication of Directive
No. 3, this theme and the importance of
OMB’s role in implementation has been
reinforced. In 1995, the Congress
reauthorized the PRA, including OMB’s
responsibility for coordination of the
Federal statistical system to ensure the
integrity, objectivity, impartiality,
utility, and confidentiality of
information collected for statistical
purposes. In December 2000, the
Congress passed and the President
signed into law what has come to be
known as the Information Quality Act
(44 U.S.C. 3516 note), which directed
OMB to issue Government-wide
information quality guidelines to ensure
the ‘‘quality, objectivity, utility, and
integrity’’ of all information, including
statistical information, disseminated by
Federal agencies.
In 2005, the National Research
Council (‘‘NRC’’) of the National
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14683
Academy of Sciences 2 stated that for
Federal Statistical Agencies to
demonstrate their credibility, they:
* * * must be, and must be perceived to be,
free of political interference and policy
advocacy. * * * Without the credibility that
comes from a strong degree of independence,
users may lose trust in the accuracy and
objectivity of the agency’s data, and data
providers may become less willing to
cooperate with agency requests. * * * [A
statistical agency] must be impartial and
avoid even the appearance that its collection,
analysis, and reporting processes might be
manipulated for political purposes. * * *
In 2014, consistent with these
comments by the NRC, as well as those
of the Government Accountability
Office’s report entitled Data Quality:
Expanded Use of Key Dissemination
Practices Would Further Safeguard the
Integrity of Federal Statistical Data
(GAO–06–607), OMB issued Statistical
Policy Directive No. 1: Fundamental
Responsibilities of Federal Statistical
Agencies and Recognized Statistical
Units (79 FR 71610, Dec. 2, 2014).
Further, in January 2019, Congress
passed the Foundations for EvidenceBased Policymaking Act of 2018, which
in section 3563 of title 44 codified the
responsibilities of statistical agencies
and units subject to section 3563 to:
* * * ‘‘(A) produce and disseminate relevant
and timely statistical information;
‘‘(B) conduct credible and accurate
statistical activities;
‘‘(C) conduct objective statistical activities;
and
‘‘(D) protect the trust of information
providers by ensuring the confidentiality and
exclusive statistical use of their responses.
* * *
Dissemination of PFEIs must continue
to adhere to these statutory
requirements. However, advances in
information dissemination technology
may provide for meeting these
requirements and the goals outlined in
Directive No. 3 in different procedural
ways than when Directive No. 3 was
issued in 1985. In particular, the
internet has, for decades, provided
broader, timelier dissemination of
information to the public than more
historic means of dissemination (e.g.,
newspaper or radio), as well as provided
for attribution of the information to
particular entities. Federal Statistical
Agencies 3 have long had their own
2 National Research Council. 2005. Principles and
Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Third
Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11252.
3 A Federal Statistical Agency is an agency or
organizational unit of the Executive Branch whose
activities are predominantly the collection,
compilation, processing, or analysis of information
for statistical purposes. See 44 U.S.C. 3561(11).
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Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 70 / Thursday, April 11, 2019 / Notices
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websites, providing a platform on which
to disseminate their data releases and
policy-neutral analysis, and, in many
cases, also have other ways on the
internet, such as social media accounts,
to disseminate their data releases and
policy-neutral analysis. In short,
modern forms of dissemination, being
more speedy and comprehensive, may
reduce the need for such a long time
period between the release of PFEIs, and
policy comment on them by employees
of the Executive Branch.
Request for Comments: The full text
of Directive No. 3, as issued in 1985, is
available at https://
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/
whitehouse.gov/files/omb/assets/OMB/
inforeg/statpolicy/dir_3_fr_
09251985.pdf. This notice requests
comment on the continued relevance of
the provision of Directive No. 3 that
prohibits public comment by employees
of the Executive Branch from speaking
about the release until at least one hour
following the release of PFEIs. In
particular, OMB seeks comment on
whether advances in information
dissemination technology since
Directive No. 3’s issuance in 1985 could
provide for meeting the goals of
Directive No. 3 to ensure equitable,
policy-neutral, and timely release and
dissemination of PFEIs under a shorter
time delay, including no time delay at
all.
The text relevant to the specified
provision for comment appears within
the last paragraph of Section 5. For ease
of review, the abbreviated text of
Section 5 is provided below, and the
text describing the current limitation on
Executive Branch employees is
provided in bolded text.
5. Release Procedure. * * * Except for the
authorized distribution described in this
section, agencies shall ensure that no
information or data estimates are released
before the official release time.
The agency will provide prerelease
information to the President, through the
Chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers, as soon as it is available. The
agency may grant others prerelease access
only under the following conditions:
(a) The agency head must establish
whatever security arrangements are
necessary and impose whatever conditions
on the granting of access are necessary to
ensure that there is no unauthorized
dissemination or use.
(b) The agency head shall ensure that any
person granted access has been fully
informed of and agreed to these conditions.
(c) Any prerelease of information under an
embargo shall not precede the official release
time by more than 30 minutes.
(d) In all cases, prerelease access shall
precede the official release time only to the
extent necessary for an orderly review of the
data.
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All employees of the Executive Branch who
receive prerelease distribution of information
and data estimates as authorized above are
responsible for assuring that there is no
release prior to the official release time.
Except for members of the staff of the agency
issuing the principal economic indicator who
have been designated by the agency head to
provide technical explanations of the data,
employees of the Executive Branch shall not
comment publicly on the data until at least
one hour after the official release time.
Any changes to the text from Section 5
would neither affect nor replace any of
the other standards and guidelines
articulated in Directive No. 3.
OMB seeks comments from all
interested parties, including data users,
businesses, and the media, on the
continued relevance of the one-hour
delay identified in the provision that
‘‘employees of the Executive Branch
shall not comment publicly on the data
until at least one hour after the official
release time.’’ In particular, OMB seeks
comment about maintaining the onehour delay, as well as reducing the time
duration of the delay to some amount
less than one hour, including
consideration of the option of
eliminating the delay entirely.
Dominic Mancini,
Deputy Administrator, Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs.
[FR Doc. 2019–07172 Filed 4–10–19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3110–01–P
Purpose of Meeting: To provide
advice and recommendations to the
National Science Foundation on major
goals and policies pertaining to Social,
Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Directorate (SBE) programs and
activities.
Agenda
• SBE Directorate Update
• To Secure Knowledge
• NSF Distinguished Lecture in the
Social, Behavioral, and Economic
Sciences: Science Comprehension
Without Curiosity is No Virtue, and
Curiosity Without Comprehension No
Vice, Dr. Dan Kahan, Yale University
• SBE research to address Office of
Management and Budget/Office of
Scientific and Technology Policy
Scientific Priorities
• Pursuing effective SBE partnerships
• Contributions of the SBE Sciences to
National Security
• Committee on Equal Opportunities in
Science and Engineering (CEOSE)
Update
• Advisory Committee for
Environmental Research and
Education (AC–ERE) Update
• SBE Sciences and NSF’s Big Ideas
• Wrap-up, Assignments, Planning for
Next SBE AC Meeting
Dated: April 8, 2019.
Crystal Robinson,
Committee Management Officer.
[FR Doc. 2019–07203 Filed 4–10–19; 8:45 am]
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NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Advisory Committee for Social,
Behavioral and Economic Sciences;
Notice of Meeting
In accordance with the Federal
Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92–
463, as amended), the National Science
Foundation (NSF) announces the
following meeting:
Name and Committee Code: Advisory
Committee for Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences (#1171).
Date and Time: May 2, 2019; 9:00
a.m. to 5:00 p.m., May 3, 2019; 9:00 a.m.
to 12:30 p.m.
Place: National Science Foundation,
2415 Eisenhower Avenue, Room E2020,
Alexandria, VA 22314.
Type of Meeting: Open.
Contact Person: Dr. Deborah Olster,
Office of the Assistant Director,
Directorate for Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences, National Science
Foundation, 2415 Eisenhower Avenue,
Alexandria, VA 22314; Telephone: 703–
292–8700.
Summary of Minutes: Posted on SBE
advisory committee website at: https://
www.nsf.gov/sbe/advisory.jsp.
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[Docket Nos. MC2019–116 and CP2019–125;
MC2019–117 and CP2019–126; MC2019–118
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New Postal Products
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Notice.
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ACTION:
The Commission is noticing a
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notice informs the public of the filing,
invites public comment, and takes other
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DATES: Comments are due: April 15,
2019.
SUMMARY:
Submit comments
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]]>Agencies
[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 70 (Thursday, April 11, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 14682-14684]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-07172]
=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Statistical Policy Directive No. 3: Compilation, Release, and
Evaluation of Principal Federal Economic Indicators. Timing of Public
Comments by Employees of the Executive Branch
AGENCY: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of
Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President.
ACTION: Notice of solicitation of comments.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: Under the Budget and Accounting Procedures Act of 1950 and the
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (``the PRA''), the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) issues a request for comments on the continued
relevance of one provision within Statistical Policy Directive No. 3:
Compilation, Release, and Evaluation of Principal Federal Economic
Indicators (50 FR 38932, Sep. 25, 1985) (``Directive No. 3'').
Directive No. 3 remains a robust, comprehensive source of guidance for
statistical series produced by Federal statistical agencies and
recognized statistical units. The government and private sector widely
watch and heavily rely upon those statistical series as indicators of
the current condition and direction of the economy. The procedures in
Directive No. 3, published in 1985, were designed to ensure equitable,
policy-neutral, and timely release and dissemination of Principal
Federal Economic Indicators (``PFEIs''). The goals of Directive No. 3
remain sound, and changing those overall goals is not the subject of
this notice; however, advances in information dissemination technology
lead OMB to seek comment on the continued relevance of the provision
that prohibits employees of the Executive Branch from commenting
publicly about the release of PFEIs until at least one hour following
their release. For example, in addition to more traditional means of
dissemination (e.g., newspaper or radio), agencies now disseminate
their data releases to the public through the internet, including on
their own websites, allowing instantaneous and equitable access to the
releases. In particular, OMB seeks comment on whether advances in
information dissemination technology since Directive No. 3's issuance
in 1985 could provide for meeting the goals of Directive No. 3 to
ensure equitable, policy-neutral, and timely release and dissemination
of PFEIs under a shorter time delay, including no time delay at all.
Additional discussion of the request for public comment may be
found in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below.
Electronic Availability: This notice is available on the internet
on the OMB website at https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/. Federal Register
notices are also available electronically at https://www.federalregister.gov/.
DATES: To ensure consideration of comments on this Notice, they must be
received no later than 60 days from the publication date of this
notice. Because of delays in the receipt of regular mail related to
security screening, respondents are encouraged to send comments
electronically (see ADDRESSES, below).
ADDRESSES: Comments may be addressed to: Nancy Potok, Chief
Statistician, Office of Management and Budget, fax number (202) 395-
7245. Email comments may be sent to [email protected],
with the subject ``Directive No. 3.'' Alternatively, comments may be
sent via www.regulations.gov--a Federal E-Government website that
allows the public to find, review, and submit comments on documents
that agencies have published in the Federal Register and that are open
for comment. Simply type ``OMB-2019-0001'' (in quotes) in the Comment
or Submission search box, click Go, and follow the instructions for
submitting comments. Comments received by the date specified above will
be included as part of the official record.
Comments submitted in response to this notice may be made available
to the public through relevant websites. For this reason, please do not
include in your comments information of a confidential nature, such as
sensitive personal information or proprietary information. If you send
an email comment, your email address will be automatically captured and
included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket.
Please note that responses to this public comment request containing
any routine notice about the confidentiality of the communication will
be treated as public comments that may be made available to
[[Page 14683]]
the public notwithstanding the inclusion of the routine notice.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For information about this request for
comments, contact Kerrie Leslie, Office of Management and Budget, 9215
New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503, telephone (202)
395-1093, email [email protected] with the subject
``More Info: Directive No. 3.''
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background: The Nation relies on the flow of
relevant, accurate, timely, reliable, and objective statistics to
support the decisions of governments, businesses, individuals,
households, and other organizations. Federal statistical agencies
release many of the statistics available about the United States'
economy, population, natural resources, environment, and public and
private institutions. It is the responsibility of Federal agencies
engaging in statistical work to support the quality and accessibility
of the Federal statistical information our Nation uses to monitor and
assess performance, progress, and needs. In its role as coordinator of
the Federal statistical system under the PRA, OMB, among other
responsibilities, is required to ensure the efficiency and
effectiveness of the system. A key method OMB uses to achieve this
responsibility is the promulgation, maintenance, and oversight of
Government-wide principles, policies, standards, and guidelines
concerning the development, presentation, and dissemination of
statistical products.
OMB's Statistical Policy Directive Nos. 3 and 4 are designed to
preserve and enhance the objectivity and transparency, in fact and in
perception, of the processes used to release and disseminate the
statistical products of Federal statistical agencies. The procedures in
these directives are intended to ensure that statistical data releases
adhere to data quality standards through equitable, policy-neutral, and
timely release of information to the general public.
The preamble to Statistical Policy Directive No. 4 (``Directive No.
4'') summarizes the history of Directive No. 3 as well as the long-
standing concern about the need to maintain public confidence in the
objectivity of Federal statistics. For example, in 1962, the
President's Committee to Appraise Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, stated: \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Measuring Employment and Unemployment.'' U.S. President's
Committee to Appraise Employment and Unemployment Statistics.
Transmitted September 27, 1962. p20.
The need to publish the information in a nonpolitical context
cannot be overemphasized. * * * a sharper line should be drawn
between the release of the statistics and their accompanying
explanation and analysis, on the one hand, and the more general type
of policy-oriented comment which is a function of the official
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
responsible for policy making, on the other.
In 1971, the Administration was widely criticized for the way it
publicly characterized some Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment
data at the time of their release. In response, the Congress instituted
the monthly Joint Economic Committee hearings on the unemployment rate,
and OMB issued Directive No. 3 to provide guidance to Executive branch
agencies on the compilation and release of PFEIs. Directive No. 3
provides for the designation of statistical series that provide timely
measures of economic activity as Principal Economic Indicators, and
requires prompt but orderly release of such indicators. The stated
purposes of Directive No. 3 are to preserve the time value of the
economic indicators, strike a balance between timeliness and accuracy,
provide for periodic evaluation of each indicator, prevent early access
to information that may affect financial and commodity markets, and
preserve the distinction between the policy-neutral release of data by
statistical agencies and their interpretation by policy officials.
Thus, Directive No. 3 is designed to promote public confidence in
Federal statistics and in the system responsible for their production,
as well as trust in the purely statistical basis of PFEIs used in the
Federal Government's policy decisions.
Since OMB's publication of Directive No. 3, this theme and the
importance of OMB's role in implementation has been reinforced. In
1995, the Congress reauthorized the PRA, including OMB's responsibility
for coordination of the Federal statistical system to ensure the
integrity, objectivity, impartiality, utility, and confidentiality of
information collected for statistical purposes. In December 2000, the
Congress passed and the President signed into law what has come to be
known as the Information Quality Act (44 U.S.C. 3516 note), which
directed OMB to issue Government-wide information quality guidelines to
ensure the ``quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity'' of all
information, including statistical information, disseminated by Federal
agencies.
In 2005, the National Research Council (``NRC'') of the National
Academy of Sciences \2\ stated that for Federal Statistical Agencies to
demonstrate their credibility, they:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ National Research Council. 2005. Principles and Practices
for a Federal Statistical Agency: Third Edition. Washington, DC: The
National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11252.
* * * must be, and must be perceived to be, free of political
interference and policy advocacy. * * * Without the credibility that
comes from a strong degree of independence, users may lose trust in
the accuracy and objectivity of the agency's data, and data
providers may become less willing to cooperate with agency requests.
* * * [A statistical agency] must be impartial and avoid even the
appearance that its collection, analysis, and reporting processes
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might be manipulated for political purposes. * * *
In 2014, consistent with these comments by the NRC, as well as
those of the Government Accountability Office's report entitled Data
Quality: Expanded Use of Key Dissemination Practices Would Further
Safeguard the Integrity of Federal Statistical Data (GAO-06-607), OMB
issued Statistical Policy Directive No. 1: Fundamental Responsibilities
of Federal Statistical Agencies and Recognized Statistical Units (79 FR
71610, Dec. 2, 2014). Further, in January 2019, Congress passed the
Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which in
section 3563 of title 44 codified the responsibilities of statistical
agencies and units subject to section 3563 to:
* * * ``(A) produce and disseminate relevant and timely statistical
information;
``(B) conduct credible and accurate statistical activities;
``(C) conduct objective statistical activities; and
``(D) protect the trust of information providers by ensuring the
confidentiality and exclusive statistical use of their responses. *
* *
Dissemination of PFEIs must continue to adhere to these statutory
requirements. However, advances in information dissemination technology
may provide for meeting these requirements and the goals outlined in
Directive No. 3 in different procedural ways than when Directive No. 3
was issued in 1985. In particular, the internet has, for decades,
provided broader, timelier dissemination of information to the public
than more historic means of dissemination (e.g., newspaper or radio),
as well as provided for attribution of the information to particular
entities. Federal Statistical Agencies \3\ have long had their own
[[Page 14684]]
websites, providing a platform on which to disseminate their data
releases and policy-neutral analysis, and, in many cases, also have
other ways on the internet, such as social media accounts, to
disseminate their data releases and policy-neutral analysis. In short,
modern forms of dissemination, being more speedy and comprehensive, may
reduce the need for such a long time period between the release of
PFEIs, and policy comment on them by employees of the Executive Branch.
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\3\ A Federal Statistical Agency is an agency or organizational
unit of the Executive Branch whose activities are predominantly the
collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of information for
statistical purposes. See 44 U.S.C. 3561(11).
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Request for Comments: The full text of Directive No. 3, as issued
in 1985, is available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/assets/OMB/inforeg/statpolicy/dir_3_fr_09251985.pdf. This notice requests comment on the continued
relevance of the provision of Directive No. 3 that prohibits public
comment by employees of the Executive Branch from speaking about the
release until at least one hour following the release of PFEIs. In
particular, OMB seeks comment on whether advances in information
dissemination technology since Directive No. 3's issuance in 1985 could
provide for meeting the goals of Directive No. 3 to ensure equitable,
policy-neutral, and timely release and dissemination of PFEIs under a
shorter time delay, including no time delay at all.
The text relevant to the specified provision for comment appears
within the last paragraph of Section 5. For ease of review, the
abbreviated text of Section 5 is provided below, and the text
describing the current limitation on Executive Branch employees is
provided in bolded text.
5. Release Procedure. * * * Except for the authorized
distribution described in this section, agencies shall ensure that
no information or data estimates are released before the official
release time.
The agency will provide prerelease information to the President,
through the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, as soon as
it is available. The agency may grant others prerelease access only
under the following conditions:
(a) The agency head must establish whatever security
arrangements are necessary and impose whatever conditions on the
granting of access are necessary to ensure that there is no
unauthorized dissemination or use.
(b) The agency head shall ensure that any person granted access
has been fully informed of and agreed to these conditions.
(c) Any prerelease of information under an embargo shall not
precede the official release time by more than 30 minutes.
(d) In all cases, prerelease access shall precede the official
release time only to the extent necessary for an orderly review of
the data.
All employees of the Executive Branch who receive prerelease
distribution of information and data estimates as authorized above
are responsible for assuring that there is no release prior to the
official release time. Except for members of the staff of the agency
issuing the principal economic indicator who have been designated by
the agency head to provide technical explanations of the data,
employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the
data until at least one hour after the official release time.
Any changes to the text from Section 5 would neither affect nor replace
any of the other standards and guidelines articulated in Directive No.
3.
OMB seeks comments from all interested parties, including data
users, businesses, and the media, on the continued relevance of the
one-hour delay identified in the provision that ``employees of the
Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least
one hour after the official release time.'' In particular, OMB seeks
comment about maintaining the one-hour delay, as well as reducing the
time duration of the delay to some amount less than one hour, including
consideration of the option of eliminating the delay entirely.
Dominic Mancini,
Deputy Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
[FR Doc. 2019-07172 Filed 4-10-19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3110-01-P
