A new on-line directory of statistics from more than 70 federal agencies will make it easier for researchers to find official data on everything from breastfeeding to weekly wages.
Yesterday the Office of Management and Budget unveiled FedStats, www.fedstats.gov, a multi-agency project spearheaded by the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy. It is the latest in a series of governmentwide Web sites designed to be one-stop shops for government resources. The U.S. Business Advisor serves business owners and the Health and Human Services Department's Healthfinder is a library of federal health information.
FedStats includes an A-to-Z listing of topics of government statistics and surveys. To find out what percentage of the U.S. population is disabled, people simply look under "D," for disabled, at FedStats. They no longer have to hunt around the federal bureaucracy to discover that the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at HHS keeps the numbers on disabilities.
"FedStats takes advantage of Internet technology to make federal statistics more accessible," Sally Katzen, administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's office of information and regulatory affairs, said. "Today, a high school student with a modem in Boise, Idaho, has better access to federal statistics than top officials in Washington had five years ago."
FedStats links to other agencies' on-line statistical tables and databases; it does not store the data on its own Web site. The site's search engine only searches official federal information resources, making it a speedy and accurate alternative to large-scale Internet search engines that search thousands of potentially unreliable and out-of-date resources.
In addition to the A-to-Z directory, FedStats breaks down statistical data by agency and by geographic region.
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