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Jim Cassell                                        jwcassell@UNC.EDU
Institute for Research in Social Science           Phone:  919-962-0782
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill           Fax:    919-962-4777
Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3355   USA

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 12:29:35 EST
From: Keith Bonney <documents@GAO.GOV>
To: Multiple recipients of list SOC-ECON <SOC-ECON@UNMVMA.UNM.EDU>
Subject: Economic Statistics: Status Report on the Initiative to *

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                      GAO Report - Economic Statistics:

The U.S. General Accounting Office, the Congressional watchdog
agency, has recently released the following report:

  *** Electronic Full Text Access and Ordering Info Follows ***

Economic Statistics: Status Report on the Initiative to Improve Economic
Statistics (Letter Report, 07/07/95, GAO/GGD-95-98).

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the actions taken by
federal agencies to implement the Economics Statistics Initiative (ESI),
focusing on: (1) the Council of Economic Advisers' (CEA) recommendations
that comprise ESI and the context of their development; (2) the
agencies' ESI implementation plans and the associated budget resources
requested and received for fiscal year (FY) 1990 through FY 1994; (3)
ESI implementation actions through May 1994; (4) other completed or
ongoing major program improvements outside of ESI; and (5) FY 1995
budget resources requested and received for economic statistical
improvements and the agencies' views on what is needed to make further
statistical improvements.

GAO found that: (1) CEA made 38 near-term ESI recommendations to address
well-known problems in economic statistics, particularly in measuring
output and quality improvements to goods and services in a rapidly
changing economy; (2) the federal agencies responsible for ESI
implementation made plans to implement most of the ESI recommendations
and requested more than $95 million and received about $50 million from
FY 1990 through FY 1994 to implement their plans; (3) as of May 1994,
most of the agencies' implementation plans were still in progress and
agencies cited budget limitations for delaying their development; (4)
some agencies considered other ongoing nonESI efforts to improve
economic statistics responsive to ESI and did not make new plans; (5)
the agencies believed further efforts were needed to improve economic
statistics, since ESI was never meant to address all the problems with
economic statistics and many ESI plans were not completed; (6) the
agencies have requested $38 million for additional statistics
improvements in FY 1995 and, as of December 1994, $18 million in
appropriations had been approved; and (7) senior policy officials
believe that more funding and better leadership is needed to further
improve economic statistics.

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