Incomplete, outdated and insufficient data from federal agencies, the result of recent staff reductions, can have an effect on the grant request process for Arkansas communities, said Alison Wright, who serves as the head of the Arkansas State Data Center.
In her position, Wright connects organizations to the data they need. She said over half of the inquiries come from local economic development agencies searching for data needed to request grants and funding.
Wright said she has already seen the effects of federal data decline in her position. In February, she needed population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau but they were temporarily offline, although they were restored soon thereafter. She also said she needed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding obesity in Arkansas, and that data was not available.
CDC’s online Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System — a collection of health-related telephone surveys with state data about U.S. residents and their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services — now includes a note that the “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
“I don’t know how they’re going to judge who gets grants in the future if that kind of stuff is missing,” Wright said. “So I think that’s going to be a big problem that we’ll see affect the local economy.”
Despite a dip in availability, most of the data she needs was restored quickly, she said. Wright said she has seen incomplete data from agencies throughout her career, but it is often restored and updated later when the agencies have more workforce and funding.
“It does ebb and flow sometimes,” Wright said. “That’s not, I would say, uncommon. But I don’t know that it’s ever been to this magnitude where the concern is raised in our state, at the center network, like a lot of the states. It’s a common topic of concern: Do we need to be worried about data that may not be there in the future for us to do what we do now?”
Economists nationwide rely on federal data to make smarter predictions and analyses.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced several reductions to its published data, including reducing samples in areas across the country including price data in April from Lincoln, Neb., and Provo, Utah.
Michael Pakko, chief economist and state economic forecaster at the Arkansas Economic Development Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said it is not a new story for economists to be concerned about cutbacks in funding that would jeopardize the availability of some data, but the reduction of the index does not devastate the work being done in Arkansas. He said the consumer price index lacked good coverage of Arkansas as a sample within their nationwide data even before recent staff cuts.
The consumer price index, he said, is generally intended to capture a nationwide average. Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes some of the data it collects in some of its regional sampling, Pakko said, the closest the bureau comes to providing something Arkansas-centric is for a region that includes Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana.
“The cutting back on the number of cities that are sampled, probably on the margin, weakens the reliability of the nationwide data — but doesn’t really directly affect anything that we use here locally,” Pakko said. “For the most part, we look at the nationwide averages for CPI.”
Pakko said there have been times when the best data used to understand the economy comes from local or non-government organizations — such as monthly data from the Arkansas Realtors Association, a professional organization. Although the association did not provide a complete accounting of all the state’s sales, it provided a pretty good sample. However, the organization eventually discontinued that publishing because of budget cuts.
“There’s another area where we had a local source to substitute for lack of a federal source, but (it) didn’t necessarily last,” Pakko said.
Pakko said one of the major advantages of having national statistical agencies is the consistency of the data, which allows economists to use the data to provide regional and national analysis.
Ranjitsinh Mane, a regional economist at the Arkansas Economic Development Institute, said having good data is important for long-term analysis and predictions. Although economists cannot determine the long-term effects quite yet, Mane said he has not seen any effects on the data he has used in the last few months.
“You need to have solid data, which is, pretty much, collected through a rigorous process, and that is really a backbone of having a good forecasting model,” Mane said. “Whenever we are talking about any economic forecast, if we don’t have that data, I mean, we are really paralyzed.”