Re:United States Census Bureau APIs
by spaceisballer on Monday October 23, 2017 @10:40PM
(#15538804)
It’s good to see the Census Bureau getting coverage. And it is true we don’t have a director, however we have a great deal of staff who have at least one to two Censuses under their belts. The real issue aside from leadership is funding. All through the planning stages we’ve had to cut important tests because of Congress and their inability to pass a budget.
> The future of the Census, including 2020, is indeed in question
The outgoing director doesn't seem worried.. from your link, when asked if he was worried about there being a leadership vacuum after his departure:
> (laughs) No, the Census is much more than the director
Maybe I should have picked a different link that discussed the bureau's overall issues, particularly anticipated budgetary shortfalls: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/census-trump-budg...
Yes, the Census is more than its leader, but losing its longtime leader and seemingly not having anyone new (there is a new acting director, IIRC) in place this close to the next census seems worrying.
What's wrong with having an acting director? At least on the corporate side, an acting-whatever is better than "not having anyone new" and many times the acting-whatever becomes the new whatever.
Maybe that means API access is one of the line-item things that could be cut when the budget isn't properly funded. But the data itself, including current datasets (which have been downloadable via bulk FTP for awhile) [0] should be pretty stable. After all, the Census is a function directly mandated by the Constitution.
[0] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/data-via-ft...