Management and Budget Office February 15, 2024 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announces the adoption of a revised Statistical Policy Directive No. 3: Compilation, Release, and Evaluation of Principal Federal Economic Indicators (Directive No. 3). 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. The goals of Directive No. 3 remain sound; this Notice announces the adoption of procedures consistent with these goals to reflect advances in communication technologies and methods. OMB has solely modified the provision, ``employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time,'' by replacing ``one hour'' with ``thirty minutes.'' This change reduces the delay after official release time before commentary from employees of the Executive Branch, while retaining a necessary time delay between policy-neutral release of the official statistics and subsequent Executive Branch interpretations of this statistical data.