The democratic engine of the United States relies on accurate and reliable data to function. A year-long study of the 13 federal agencies involved in U.S. data collection, including the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics suggests that the nation’s statistics are at risk. The study was produced by the American Statistical Association in partnership with George Mason University and supported by the Sloan Foundation and is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories.

Constance (Connie) Citro is a senior scholar with the Committee on National Statistics and an independent consultant in which capacity she worked on the project that produced A Nation’s Data at Risk. She was previously CNSTAT director from 2004-2017 and senior study director from 1986-2003. Citro was an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation/Census Bureau research fellow and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She served as president of the Association of Public Data Users and its representative to the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, edited the Window on Washington column for Chance magazine, and served on the Advisory Committee of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. In 2018, the American Statistical Association established the Links Lecture Award in honor of Citro, Robert Groves, and Fritz Scheuren. She will give the 32nd Morris Hansen Lecture in September 2024.

Jonathan Auerbach is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at George Mason University. His research covers a wide range of topics at the intersection of statistics and public policy, including urban analytics, open data, and official statistics. His methodological interests include the analysis of longitudinal data, particularly for data science and causal inference. He is the current president of the Washington Statistical Society and the former science policy fellow at the American Statistical Association