What do you think about the integrity of data produced by the Federal agencies? Do you trust it? Do you feel comfortable making decisions with it?
Recently, the New York Post reported the following:
“A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.
And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers.
The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.
When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.
The implication was that someone with the ability to fill in the blanks on incomplete surveys was doing just that.
The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.”
There are often innuendos that the data produced by the federal agencies lacks integrity. Several years ago Jack Welch claimed that labor data was falsified to help the Democratic campaign. While Welch had reason to be concerned about the data, his allegations were not addressed.
In Colorado there have been claims that elected officials have tried to get state agencies to falsify data and that in some cases they were successful. While the inferences came from credible sources, the innuendos were never addressed, hence they were never verified.
Colorado’s state agency that works with the Census department is the State Demographers Office (They are not the regional Census office) They have a positive reputation for making sure Colorado is fairly and accurately represented in the various surveys.
Generally speaking, state and federal agencies go to great lengths to hire people with integrity. At the same time, the temporary Census workers have thankless jobs.
State and federal agencies are no different than other organizations. Despite their aspirations to hire only quality employees, they sometimes employ workers who do not do the right things.
In defense of the federal agencies, over the past ten years they have been asked to provide more detailed data on a more timely basis with smaller or restricted budgets. As a result they sometimes produce preliminary data that does not always make sense. Such discrepancies are not an issue of integrity, but rather flawed methodology. Usually when the agencies revise their data, it aligns with what is happening on the street.
Despite the limitations of our state and federal data, we are fortunate to have so many data series to work with. Many countries have do not produce statistics or they have limited data to make decisions on.
It is great the whistleblower is being heard. If the innuendos are true, hopefully they will be addressed. The most damning part of this situation is that it destroys the integrity of the federal agencies that produce the data. Even worse, it is disturbing to think that public and private entities used data to make critical decisions and prepare budgets and policies that was intentionally and knowingly flawed. The integrity of the data we use on a regular basis is important!