DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, Hon. WAYNE MORSE, OFFICE OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1966. DEAR SENATOR MORSE: Thank you for your letter of March 11 to Commissioner Howe. On March 14 Mr. Seibert sent to Mr. Charles Lee, of your staff, some materials on the program under Section 1009, Title X, NDEA. Copies of these materials are enclosed. He has also supplied the enclosed copy of Working Paper No. 1. Pages 21-25 are pertinent to your question. The Office of Education has been working with the Committee on Educational Data Systems (CEDS) of the Council of Chief State School Officers for the past three years on the development of a nationwide Basic Educational Data System (BEDS). Agreement has been reached on the most basic, highest priority items of information to be included in this system in all five areas of staff, instructional program, pupils, facilities, and finance. These data are transmitted from the State education agencies to the U.S. Office of Education in unit record, punch card or magnetic tape form, and will permit the aggregating of basic educational statistics without the need for a special survey, as you state in your letter. Once reduced to magnetic tape, these data will provide both general and special purpose statistics, on demand, for local and State education agencies, geographic areas, Congressional Districts, Federal programs, etc. The Fourth Annual National OE-CEDS Conference is being held this coming April 4-7, at the Woodner Hotel in Washington, D.C., for the purpose of determining the 1966-67 OE-CEDS program for the implementation and further development of this joint Federal-State project. It is expected that the first usable data to come from this cooperative effort will be fall 1966 professional staff information, to become available for use in the spring of 1967 for the participating States. School facility information will be made a part of this system for the first time in the fall of 1966. Allowing one year for development, such school building data for fall 1967 should become available for use in the spring of 1968 for the participating States. If the Office of Legislation can be of further assistance, please let us know. Sincerely yours, ALBERT L. ALFORD, Acting Assistant Commissioner for Legislation. Working Paper No. 1 FEDERAL-STATE-LOCAL COOPERATIVE Statements on Programs and Problems of Federal-State-Local Cooperative Arrangements for Selected Statistical Activities Prepared for the NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPARATIVE STATISTICS February 23-25, 1966 Washington, Office of Statistical Standards Executive Office of the President Development of Cooperative Federal-State Arrangements 5 Some Office of Education Programs for Promoting State and Cooperation in Producing National Health Statistics..... Statistical Programs of the Welfare Administration... EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT BUREAU OF THE BUDGET Washington, D. C. 20503 Federal-State-Local Cooperative Arrangements in Statistics Introduction Cooperation between the Federal, State and local governmental units in statistical programs has, in the past, been limited to specific subject areas, primarily agriculture, labor, and vital statistics. The highlights of some of the more extensive and successful of these cooperative programs are set forth in the short papers presented in this pamphlet. The activities of the Crop Reporting Service of the Department of Agriculture date back to Civil War days, with the appointment of State statistical agents as early as 1882. Census reporting on finances of States and local areas began in 1850. Collection of mortality statistics started in 1880. The collection of labor statistics goes back more than half a century. Uniform Crime Reports and highway statistics systems have developed since the 1930's. More recently cooperative Federal-State efforts in statistics on education and welfare have been highlighted. Each subject field of statistics developed in its own manner taking into account the National and State interests and the existing organizational arrangements in the field. The manner and degree of Federal-State-local cooperation varied accordingly. In the vital statistics program the Federal Government purchased from the States records which met specified standards. Grant-in-aid arrangements facilitated local-State-Federal efforts in the development of welfare statistics. The employment statistics programs involve a cooperative arrangement between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Employment Security in Washington and the cooperating State agencies in each of the States and the District of Columbia. Generally, the programs described may be divided into those where the governmental units report on their own activities and those where they act as a transmittal point between other respondents and the Federal Government. The cooperative arrangements in these programs provide, in some measure, for continuing contact between the Federal Government and the States. Arrangements for consultation and help vary from the informal to highly detailed joint working arrangements. Worthy of note is the annual Interstate Conference on Labor Statistics described in the last paper in this series. While there has been coordination among agencies at the Federal level, and some coordination between Federal and State agencies has emerged through the mechanisms of the individual programs, there has as yet been no significant effort at over-all development and coordination of statistical programs by the different levels of Government. Briefly, the National Conference on Comparative Statistics is intended to explore current and developing needs for comparable statistical information to aid decision making and to serve important governmental ends. Primary attention is being directed to statistical requirements at the State and local levels. Opportunities and methods for improving the content, availability, use, and comparability of data for these purposes are also being explored. To avoid time-consuming review of existing arrangements, the administrators of eight agencies which have statistical programs involving Federal-State-local interests were asked to prepare background papers on their programs, highlighting the arrangements which have developed over the years. Selected problems which were faced and overcome in the development of uniform standards are also discussed. In some instances, especially where highly developed systems have emerged, the principles on which Federal-State cooperation is based are outlined. The general goal of the National Conference on Comparative Statistics is to accelerate efforts to define and meet critical information needs and to foster appropriate intra-governmental, interstate, and intergovernmental coordination. Hopefully, the experiences described in these eight papers will provide background for discussing the next steps in moving toward these goals. They indicate that much has been accomplished in special subject 'fields. But the development by the several levels of government of a body of statistical information properly designed for interrelated decision making has yet to be undertaken. Raymond T. Bowman Assistant Director for |