By Dr. Karin Orvis, Chief Statistician of the United States
Tomorrow, OMB’s Trust Regulation, officially referred to as the Fundamental Responsibilities of Statistical Agencies and Units rule, will be published in the Federal Register. The Trust Regulation will promote public trust in how the Federal government generates and disseminates statistics that Americans rely on every day.
Federal statistics play a key role in everything from policymaking to public discourse. Trusted and accurate Federal statistics are important for policymakers, individuals, and businesses to make informed decisions.
Federal statistics are produced as a public good, whose value is rooted in public trust. Maintaining and bolstering public trust in our Nation’s statistics is absolutely critical.
The Trust Regulation aims to promote trust in Federal statistics, and the recognized statistical agencies and units that produce them, by codifying and clarifying the four long-standing fundamental responsibilities of statistical agencies across the Federal government:
- To produce and disseminate relevant and timely statistical information;
- To conduct credible and accurate statistical activities;
- To carry out objective statistical activities; and
- To protect the trust of respondents and information providers by ensuring the confidentiality and exclusive statistical use of their responses.
This regulation also sets forth requirements for all other Federal agencies to ensure they enable, support, and facilitate the work of the statistical agencies.
The Trust Regulation ascribes statistical agencies and all other Federal agencies with a responsibility to ensure that they will remain safe places for the collection, maintenance, and sharing of information critical to government decision making, while also ensuring the privacy of individuals and organizations.
The responsibilities described in this regulation are not new and are consistent with longstanding OMB, Federal government, and international policy. Yet effectively implementing them in the form of standards and practices requires clear rules. By establishing this much needed framework, this regulation provides clarity and works to ensure that statistical agencies can reliably produce relevant, timely, accurate, and objective statistics.
The Trust Regulation was informed by the perspectives of staff across statistical agencies and other Federal agencies, and the members of the public who took the time to submit written comments in response to the proposed rule or to provide input during public webinars. This regulation marks a major milestone in the implementation of the bipartisan Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, or the Evidence Act.
Today marks a significant day for the Federal Statistical System and our Nation’s statistics, but the work does not stop here. We must continue to make sure our Nation’s Federal Statistical System produces accurate, objective, high-quality, and trustworthy information and that our Federal statistics remain relevant in meeting the information needs of the American people, data users, and policymakers. Issuing and implementing the Trust Regulation enables both of these critical goals.
