Alan: The Census Bureau's approach to embargoing data appears inconsistent. They put an embargo on the ACS data released August 15th and October 3rd (next Tuesday), but not on the data released August 29th. For the August 29th release (detailed socio-economic data by area of residence) everybody had a whack at it the morning of 8/29. And as far as I know, our State Data Center network doesn't have early access to any of the embargoed ACS data. In 2002, the State Data Center network, and some (or many?) of the "vetted" affiliates, DID have early access to the embargoed Census 2000 SF3 databases. We were given passwords to access the Bureau's FTP site on 8/21/02, for the California SF3 data that was embargoed until 8/27/02. We had to sign a "Access to Embargo Data and Secure Server Agreement" with the Census Bureau Liaision office before we were granted the secret password. This worked out well because we were able to roll out completed data comparisons (to the public, to our government partners, to the media) on the day the embargo was lifted. We all should see what USA Today finds out about ACS in next Tuesday's paper. Paul Overberg of USA Today does a very good job at census reporting. My guess is that it will be on housing prices and housing affordability. Perhaps household income, but income is a minefield because of inflation adjustments, reference period, and differing respondent perception of income, decennial census vs ACS. I prefer the approach without any embargo. Everybody, including university researchers, state data centers, the media, the pundits, the feds * should all get equal access at the same time. What we're doing is preparing table shells to drop in 2005 data. Here's what we're focusing on: * Total Housing Units by County: 2000-2005 (compare to indy estimates of housing units) * Households by Vehicles Available by County: 1960-2005 * Total Household Vehicles and Vehicles per Household, by County: 1960-2005 * Workers by Means of Transportation to Work, by County-of-Work: 19??-2005 * Workers by Industry of Worker, by County-of-Work: 2000-2005 * Workers by Class of Worker, by County-of-Work: 2000-2005 * Householders by Age, by County-of-Residence: 1990-2005 (for our synthetic population analyses) At least that's what we're planning for next Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon we'll compute statistical significance measures. Tuesday night, baseball. Chuck Purvis, MTC This follows from their press approach on most things - not a transportation thing. It gives press time to prepare stories on release date - standard procedure on most press activities in govt. I believe that they also make the data available early on an embargoed basis to State Data Centers (Elaine -yes?) I have been berated in the past by AASHTO State press people for not giving them the data when I see it on an embargoed basis and obviously that would be the last time I ever saw it if I spread it around. By the way I should have said that USA Today will do something if there is something newsworthy there to do. With the annual stuff one never knows whether there may be anything to get excited about. Alan PS received copies from printers today of Commuting in America III taadahh! From: Polzin, Steve [mailto:polzin@cutr.usf.edu] Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 8:52 AM To: Alan Pisarski; Murakami, Elaine; ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Cc: Srinivasan, Nanda Subject: RE: [CTPP] October 3 is the next scheduled release of ACStablesincluding PLACE OF WORK! Who in the world made the decision that the media should get the data before the professional community? Seems strange to me. Steven E. Polzin, Ph.D. Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida 4202 Fowler Ave., CUT100 Tampa, FL 33620-5375 813-974-9849 (w) 813-416-7517 (c) polzin(a)cutr.usf.edu