Newsletter Archive
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Take Action! Consolidated State Performance Report Renewal and More
June 22, 2026by Meghan MauryRead MoreCollection of the Week: Consolidated State Performance Report Renewal. This reporting tool collects information from states related to the performance and monitoring activities of programs under ESSA and the McKinney-Vento Act. ED is making significant changes to the collection, including eliminating questions on Assessment waivers, Title III, Part A allocation timeline, McKinney-Vento and ARP Homeless, Certification requirement for OME, Postsecondary URLs, Title I, Part D, and Funding Transferability for State and Local Education Agencies; and combining the CSPR I and II into a single CSPR collection.
Comments due July 27.Every time the government makes a change to a survey or a form — or introduces a new survey or form — you have the right to weigh in on that decision. The Take Action! newsletter highlights surveys or forms the government is changing, renewing, or introducing. Click the links to tell the government what you think about the changes they are making.
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A New Commerce Policy Could Mean Less Public Data, Not Better Public Data
June 11, 2026by Christopher Steven Marcum, Meghan Maury, and Beth JaroszRead MoreLate last week, the Department of Commerce quietly issued a sweeping new policy that could reshape how the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) protect the privacy of people and businesses whose information they collect.
The policy bars the agencies from using “noise infusion,” a family of privacy-protection techniques that make small, controlled changes to published data so that no individual person, household, or business can be reidentified from publicly accessible datasets. One such technique that has garnered some controversy in the past is known as “differential privacy.” That may sound technical. But the stakes are simple: federal statistical agencies are required to do two things at once. They must protect confidential information, and they must publish useful public data. By taking away one of the tools agencies use to do both, the likely result is not “better data.” It may be less data, or less useful data.
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Take Action! American Community Survey, Puerto Rico Community Survey, and More
June 10, 2026by Meghan MauryRead MoreDue This Week: American Community Survey (ACS) and Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS). The ACS and PRCS — sometimes called the “crown jewels” of the federal statistical system — collect social, economic, housing and demographic data from over 3.5 million households per year. In the previous listing, Census indicated that it would update the race and ethnicity questions on the ACS to comply with the revised SPD15 standards, but in this listing they indicate that they are not moving forward with that change. Comment today — deadline for comments is June 13.
Every time the government makes a change to a survey or a form — or introduces a new survey or form — you have the right to weigh in on that decision. The Take Action! newsletter highlights surveys or forms the government is changing, renewing, or introducing. Click the links to tell the government what you think about the changes they are making.
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Take Action! Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors
June 04, 2026by Meghan MauryRead MoreForm of the Week: Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors. This new form will collect information necessary for compliance with EO 14398, Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors, which prohibits contractors from engaging in any racially discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities. While supplementary information is not yet available (but has been requested), the underlying regulation requires contractors to "Furnish all information and reports, including providing access to books, records, and accounts, as required by the contracting officer, for purposes of ascertaining compliance with the clause."
Comments due July 6.Every time the government makes a change to a survey or a form — or introduces a new survey or form — you have the right to weigh in on that decision. The Take Action! newsletter highlights surveys or forms the government is changing, renewing, or introducing. Click the links to tell the government what you think about the changes they are making.
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An Automated Data Monitoring Toolkit and the AI Benchmarking Exercise at the Public Data Project
June 02, 2026by Molly HardyRead MoreThis post is being shared on both the dataindex.us newsletter and the Library Innovation Lab’s blog.
“Is data changing? Is it being disappeared? How do we know? How can we know?” This interrogative refrain rang through just about every conversation I had when, almost a year ago, I came to Harvard Law School Library to lead the Public Data Project. Thanks to the dataindex.us Data Checkup, a plan is in place to do this complicated but essential work. Through the careful scaffolding dataindex.us has constructed and the assiduous research of its staff, more than a dozen federal datasets have “health assessments” and the team continues to add to this list.