The Bureau of Transportation Statistics Priorities for the Future (1997) / Chapter Skim
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4 ENSURING RELEVANCE
4 ENSURING RELEVANCE
Pages 64-86
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From page 64... ...
Work needs to begin. Central to a statistical agency' s ability to improve data relevance, and more generally to determine priorities for its work, is that it have a broad vision of a comprehensive data system that can serve the information needs of users over the medium and long term.
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From page 65... ...
For example, with concern about the effects of economic growth on the environment and nonrenewable resources, there is growing interest in concepts of national income and gross national product that account for natural resource depletion, pollution, and other environmental costs. More narrowly, beginning in December 1991, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has featured gross domestic product (GDP)
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From page 66... ...
The implications of a statistical agency's focusing on data relevance in terms of appropriateness of concepts and their measurement, level of subject matter and geographic detail, and timeliness are that it must identify needs for data among current users, gaps in available data systems, and possibilities for the agency to inform the policy debates of the future. This process, combined with a comprehensive understanding of the field, permits the agency to define sets of indicators that offer great relevance to current and future users and to provide other kinds of useful data.
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From page 67... ...
The continuing public concern with such issues as the safety of the transportation system, the quality of the environment, and the costs and availability of energy sources will also have important implications for transportation planning and investment. In developing a vision of information needs and a data system to address them, BTS must assess the data requirements of continuing and emerging national transportation policy concerns as seen by the Congress, the administration, and others, including states, metropolitan planning organizations, industry, and the general public.
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From page 68... ...
Decisions to reduce or eliminate long-established data series are always difficult to make. However, a statistical agency that is striving to improve data relevance must have a vision of a comprehensive data system that is dynamic and allows for the retirement of obsolescent data series along with the emergence of new and modified series.
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From page 69... ...
ENSURING RELEVANCE: TRANSPORTATION INDICATORS The 1991 ISTEA mandates BTS to establish and implement, in cooperation with the modal administrations, the states, and other federal officials, a compre 2BTS recently outlined its goals in specific areas for fiscal 1997 and 1998 (provided in a background document for the Advisory Council on Transportation Statistics)
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From page 70... ...
Moreover, the policy use of key indicators can bring unwelcome publicity to a statistical agency, which may be hard pressed to explain the proper interpretation of its statistics and to defend the concepts and methods against politically motivated criticism and misuse. Furthermore, the development of indicators should not be the only focus of a statistical agency in terms of providing relevant data.
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From page 71... ...
BTS has already established as a priority goal for fiscal 1998 to begin work on transportation indicators. BTS proposes a cooperative activity with the other USDOT modal administrations, such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, in which they would first identify appropriate topics and concepts for indicators and BTS would then provide technical advice on implementation.
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From page 72... ...
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From page 73... ...
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From page 74... ...
The Transportation Research Board report, Data for Decisions (National Research Council, 1992a) , identified several key areas for which it would be useful to have national indicators but for which data are currently difficult to compare across transportation modes: safety; access to services by such groups as elderly, disabled, low-income, and rural populations; and the efficiency and quality of service provided by the transportation system.
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From page 75... ...
BTS will need to work closely with statistical and analysis units in the other USDOT modal administrations, with states and metropolitan planning organizations, and with the transportation community at large to identify priority areas for indicators and appropriate data and methods for developing useful time series. As a way to proceed, we suggest that BTS look first to build on a few of the data series that are produced by other USDOT modal administrations and consider how it can add value to them and what new series should be developed to fill existing gaps.
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From page 76... ...
We recommend that BTS take a major step to facilitate data coordination among the modal administrations in USDOT through a departmentwide statistical budget.
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From page 77... ...
Office of Management and Budget, which brought together information on agencies' proposed fiscal 1998 statistical budgets across the entire federal government for purposes of program review and decision making among competing priorities.5 For USDOT, BTS should compile budget information from all of the modal administrations about their statistical programs, including supporting justification. BTS could organize this material in several ways for example, by subject area as well as by modal administration and agency.
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From page 78... ...
The budgets for operating such data systems would not be included in the USDOT statistical budget, except for that portion that may be devoted to statistical analysis of the data for public use.6 Practically speaking, the USDOT statistical budget would include the budgets of the major statistical units in the modal administrations (e.g., the Safety Data Services Division in the Federal Aviation Administration see Appendix B) , plus other programs that are not lodged within a separate statistical unit but that the modal administration identifies as having an important statistical component.
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From page 79... ...
we briefly review sources of data on household travel and develop some ideas about data linkage opportunities and remaining data gaps (see also Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1993c, 1995:96-102~. Conducting cross-system data reviews, as well as carrying out other kinds of coordination activities, will require that BTS involve appropriate agencies through working groups, interagency committees, and the like.
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From page 80... ...
are lodged with other USDOT modal administrations.7 However, as the lead statistical agency for the department, BTS should develop regular channels of communication with these two important constituencies and in the past year it has begun to do so. We recommend as a priority effort that BTS continue with its plans for obtaining regular input from states and MPOs and, relatedly, its plans for technical assistance to help states and MPOs make more effective use of transportation data (see recommendation 8 at the end of the chapter)
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From page 81... ...
for data collection and dissemination, and the kinds of technical assistance that could help states and MPOs make more effective use of national transportation data sets. We urge that the conference be followed up by considering the most effective communication channels to establish for regular, two-way interaction of BTS and other USDOT modal administrations with states and MPOs.
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From page 82... ...
Such analyses are also critical to the statistical agency itself to help it understand the data in its area, determine how to keep the data relevant for policy and other purposes, and continually refine its vision of a comprehensive transportation data system to serve user information needs. (See Bonnen, 1997, for a discussion of the analysis roles of statistical agencies.)
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From page 83... ...
The Role of the TSARs BTS is mandated by the 1991 ISTEA to produce a Transportation Statistics Annual Report, and the TSARs produced to date have contained useful data and analyses that were not previously available to transportation planners and analysts. However, the TSAR may not be the best format with which to provide transportation data analyses to the user community or, relatedly, to provide a set of widely followed national transportation indicators.
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From page 84... ...
One alternative would involve the chartbook that we earlier suggested BTS publish, together with BTS's new twice-yearly Journal of Transportation and Statistics. Under this alternative, the chartbook would include 10 to 20 key statistical indicators with accompanying brief commentary and notes on methods; it would first appear annually but, as resources permit, should be published more frequently.
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From page 85... ...
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From page 86... ...
BTS should develop key national statistical indicators for the transportation system for example, multimodal series in the areas of safety, travel patterns, and the condition of the transportation infrastructure in consultation with the statistical and analysis units in the other USDOT modal administrations and the transportation community. USDOT Statistical Budget (7)
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