“The Federal Statistical System of the United States is the decentralized network of federal agencies which produce data about the people, economy, natural resources, and infrastructure of the United States.” (Wikipedia)
I recently got the opportunity to visit the offices of the Committee on National Statistics and I realized I had no idea just how much statistical work the Federal government does. Before this, the only statistical agency I really knew about was the Census Bureau. Based on my complete and total ignorance about all of the work done and data collected by the U.S. federal government, I decided to compile together as many sources of data as I could. Wherever possible, I tried to find APIs. This list is also probably not exhaustive. There is also way more data from state and local governments on data.gov, but I have not found this site to be particularly helpful when just looking for possible interesting data sources. It’s better for very specific searches in my opinion.
These 13 principal agencies are crucial to collecting data on the population and resources of the United States. They “provide critical support for policymaking, program management, and evaluation.” Two of the 13 are independent: the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), a part of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES), a part of the Social Security Administration (SSA).
(If you’re exhausted by the alphabet soup already, I suggest you stop reading….)
The report linked at the top contains descriptions of every agency and every statistical program. It also links to every program’s website and provides employment data tables for the 13 principal agencies. Below, the numbers (x/y) are x = the number of statisticians employed and y = the number of full-time employees in the agency as of 2017.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): (12/509 ≈ 2%)
Description: “BEA is responsible for the preparation, development, and interpretation of the Nation’s economic accounts.”
Description: “BJS collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates statistical information on all aspects of the criminal justice system; assists State, Tribal, and local governments in gathering and analyzing justice statistics; and disseminates high value information and statistics to inform policymakers, researchers, criminal justice practitioners and the general public.”
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS): (15/84 ≈ 18%)
Description: “BTS compiles, analyzes, and disseminates information about the Nation’s transportation systems, including the extent, use, condition, performance, and consequences of those systems.”
Description: “ERS provides economic and other social science research and analysis to inform public and private decision making on agriculture, food, natural resources, and rural America.”
Home Agency: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Bonus: Cool sounding postdoc gig. Application due November 19, 2018!
Energy Information Administration (EIA): (75/368 = 20%)
Description: “EIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment.”
National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS): (634/1037 ≈ 61%)
Description: " NASS collects, summarizes, analyzes, and publishes data on the number of farms and land in farms; acreage, yield, production, and stocks of crops; inventories and production of livestock, including eggs and dairy products; prices received by farmers for products, prices paid for commodities and services, and related indexes; agriculture production and marketing data; cold storage supplies; agricultural chemical use; and other related areas of the agricultural economy."
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): (71/93 ≈ 76%)
Description: “NCES collects, analyzes, and disseminates education statistics at all levels, from preschool through postsecondary and adult education, including statistics on international education.”
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS): (164/503 ≈ 33%)
Description: “NCHS is responsible for the collection, maintenance, analysis, and dissemination of statistics on the nature and extent of the health, illness, and disability of the U.S. population; the impact of illness and disability on the economy; the effects of environmental, social, and other health hazards; health care costs and financing; family formation, growth, and dissolution; and vital events (births and deaths).”
Home Agency: Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES): (25/52 ≈ 48%)
Description: “NCSES is called on to support the collection of statistical data on research and development trends, the science and engineering workforce, U.S. competitiveness, and the condition and progress of the Nation’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; to support research using the data it collects and on methodologies in areas related to the work of the Center; and to support the education and training of researchers in the use of its own and other large-scale, nationally representative data sets.”
Of the fifteen US federal government departments, fourteen have additional statistical programs (outside of the 13 principal statistical agencies), and there are even more programs in independent agencies. There are 115 of these statistical programs in total (yes, I counted them). For each one, I just link to the closest thing to a data website I could find.
High level overview of US gov data locations.
Research
Where does the U.S. Government Keep its Data?
From awesome work at https://sctyner.github.io/static/presentations/Misc/GraphicsGroupISU/2018-11-16-us-govt-data.html
2018-11-16 10:13:19 CST
Inspiration and primary source for all of this information: Statistical Programs of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2017
Principal Statistical Agency Programs
“The Federal Statistical System of the United States is the decentralized network of federal agencies which produce data about the people, economy, natural resources, and infrastructure of the United States.” (Wikipedia)
I recently got the opportunity to visit the offices of the Committee on National Statistics and I realized I had no idea just how much statistical work the Federal government does. Before this, the only statistical agency I really knew about was the Census Bureau. Based on my complete and total ignorance about all of the work done and data collected by the U.S. federal government, I decided to compile together as many sources of data as I could. Wherever possible, I tried to find APIs. This list is also probably not exhaustive. There is also way more data from state and local governments on data.gov, but I have not found this site to be particularly helpful when just looking for possible interesting data sources. It’s better for very specific searches in my opinion.
These 13 principal agencies are crucial to collecting data on the population and resources of the United States. They “provide critical support for policymaking, program management, and evaluation.” Two of the 13 are independent: the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), a part of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES), a part of the Social Security Administration (SSA).
(If you’re exhausted by the alphabet soup already, I suggest you stop reading….)
The report linked at the top contains descriptions of every agency and every statistical program. It also links to every program’s website and provides employment data tables for the 13 principal agencies. Below, the numbers (x/y) are x = the number of statisticians employed and y = the number of full-time employees in the agency as of 2017.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): (12/509≈ 2%)
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): (42/69≈ 61%)
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): (168/2167≈ 8%)
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS): (15/84≈ 18%)
Census Bureau (Census): (2311/6551≈ 35%)
Economic Research Service (ERS): (1/359≈ .3%)
APIPrayer directed at Excel files here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/Energy Information Administration (EIA): (75/368= 20%)
National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS): (634/1037≈ 61%)
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): (71/93≈ 76%)
APIGood luck: https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ , https://nces.ed.gov/datatools/National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS): (164/503≈ 33%)
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES): (25/52≈ 48%)
APIPrayer and patience: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/data-tools.cfmOffice of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES): (3/66≈ 5%)
APIPrayer: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/data/index.htmlStatistics of Income (SOI): (25/116≈ 22%)
API🤷: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-release-and-disseminationOther Federal Statistical Programs, by Department
Of the fifteen US federal government departments, fourteen have additional statistical programs (outside of the 13 principal statistical agencies), and there are even more programs in independent agencies. There are 115 of these statistical programs in total (yes, I counted them). For each one, I just link to the closest thing to a data website I could find.
Department of Agriculture : https://www.usda.gov/media/digital/developer-resources
Department of Commerce : APIs linked + code on Github!!!! https://github.com/CommerceGov/commerce.gov-api
Department of Defense : https://data.defense.gov/
Department of Education: https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/catalog/index.html, https://eddataexpress.ed.gov/?src=ft , https://usedgov.github.io/, https://usedgov.github.io/api/
Department of Energy : https://www.energy.gov/data/open-energy-data
Department of Health and Human Services : https://www.hhs.gov/developer.html, https://healthdata.gov/
Administration for Children and Families (ACF) : https://www.acf.hhs.gov/reports#block-acf-theme-opre-reports
Administration for Community Living (ACL) : https://agid.acl.gov/
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) : https://www.ahrq.gov/data/resources/index.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) : https://data.cdc.gov/ ; https://github.com/CDCgov .
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) : https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems.html
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) : https://data.hrsa.gov/
Indian Health Service (IHS) : https://www.ihs.gov/dps/
National Institutes of Health (NIH) : https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/resources/reports-data.html, https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/about/data-files-api, https://report.nih.gov/databases.aspx
National Cancer Institute (NCI) : https://api.seer.cancer.gov/, https://clinicaltrialsapi.cancer.gov/ , https://www.cancer.gov/search/results?swKeyword=api
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) : https://nccih.nih.gov/research/statistics
National Eye Institute (NEI) : https://nei.nih.gov/eyedata
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) : https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/science
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) : https://www.genome.gov/policyethics/legdatabase/pubsearch.cfm, https://www.genome.gov/10000018/computational-and-statistical-genomics-branch-csgb/
National Institute on Aging (NIA) : https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/resources
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) : https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/research/guidelines-and-resources/epidemiologic-data
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) : https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/resources
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) : https://www.nibib.nih.gov/
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) : https://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/resources/index
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) : https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) : https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/research/data-statistics
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) : https://www.niddk.nih.gov/research-funding/research-resources
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) : https://github.com/nih-nida
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) : https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/databases/index.cfm
National Institute of General Medical Sciences’ (NIGMS) : https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/other-resources
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) : https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/index.shtml
Office of the Director (NIH/OD) : https://acd.od.nih.gov/working-groups.html
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) : https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-search/data
Office of Population Affairs (OPA) : https://www.hhs.gov/opa/
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) : https://www.samhsa.gov/data/all-reports
Department of Homeland Security : https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-developer-community
Department of Housing and Urban Development : https://data.hud.gov/
Department of the Interior : https://www.doi.gov/data, https://data.doi.gov/dataset
Department of Justice : https://www.justice.gov/developer , https://data.ojp.gov/developer/index.html
Department of Labor: https://enforcedata.dol.gov/homePage.php, https://developer.dol.gov/
Department of State : https://www.state.gov/api/v1/docs/, https://www.state.gov/developer/, https://www.state.gov/data/
Department of Transportation : https://www.transportation.gov/developer
Department of Veterans Affairs : https://www.data.va.gov/, https://developer.va.gov/
Statistical Programs of Other Federal Agencies 57
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM): https://www.usagm.gov/our-work/strategy-and-results/strategic-priorities/research-reports/What did I learn?