Program is now announced and registration for both the in-person and virtual conferences are open.
Frauke Kreuter LMU Munich / University of Maryland
Data in the Balance: Incentives, Independence, and Public Statistics
Government statistics—and the data behind them—are the backbone of scientific research and evidence-based policymaking. Yet chronic under-funding, fragmented systems, and the spread of low-cost synthetic data now threaten their viability. This keynote offers a brief historical overview of the challenges federal statistical systems faced even before today’s fiscal pressures, argues that we still lack agreed-upon metrics for “good” data (perhaps by design), and shows why automated tracking of data-usage metrics—demonstrated in the Democratizing Data pilot—will be essential going forward. The goal is to align incentives for data investment with those of data scientists, open-source developers, and science experts, so we can break down silos, lower costs, and keep the nation’s statistical infrastructure credible, visible, and worth funding.