GOVERNMENT STATISTICS SECTION
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
December 18, 2001 12:30 PM
ASA Office


Attending the meeting: Clyde Tucker, Pat Doyle, Jana Asher, John Dixon, Bill Wong, Karen Woodrow-Lafield, John Czajka, Michael L. Cohen, Nancy Bates, and Robie Sangster.

 

  1. ASA Executive Director (Bill Smith)
  2. ASA’s new Executive Director, William (Bill) Smith, stopped in to meet the GSS Executive Board and shared lunch with us. He provided us with information about the new ASA office plans. They plan to move into the new space sometime around April-June 2003. The good news is that they will have more parking! COPAFS is moving with ASA. The new location will have the ability to hold virtual meetings and will have a boardroom that will hold up to 50 participants. He also said the Executive Board of Directors met and worked on strategic planning for the next 20 years. In addition he reported that the ASA would be raising the cost of JASA for the libraries to $480.00.

  3. Chairs Report (Clyde Tucker)
  4. Clyde began by thanking the members for s successful year. He thanked Robie for her work with the Corporate Sponsorship and budgets. Clyde and the board members thanked Wendy, Pat, and Jana for their hard work on the Wray Smith Scholarship Fund.

    Phil Kott is the new Herriot Award Committee Representative. Pat will be the new COPAFS representative. Mike stays on for another year. Wendy is chair elect for next year.

    We discussed officer nominations. Nominations include:
    Chair-Elect: Nathaniel Schenker and Allen Schirm
    Program Chair-Elect: Jana Asher and Leonard Gaines
    Secretary-Treasurer: Patricia Becker and Connie Citro
    Publications Officer: Elizabeth Margosches and Michele (Shelley) Ver Ploeg

  5. Approval of Minutes
  6. John Czajka raised one question about the minutes regarding whether the COS actually approved the GSS Charter during the JSM. To clarify the last minutes, the COS will review the charter by October 1st. The minutes were approved subject to this clarification.

  7. Treasure’s Report (Robie Sangster and Clyde Tucker)
  8. The group discussed that we really will not have a good idea on how much we will receive from the proceedings until later. We will probably know better by our spring meeting what we really have in the 2002 budget.

  9. Corporate Sponsorship (Clyde Tucker and Robie Sangster)
  10. Implementation of the corporate sponsorship project has been less then uniform across the years. Contributions have been sporadic at best. Robie has found that getting this task completed takes considerable work before and after the letters goes out. It is a huge job that takes an inordinate amount of time and requires special skills:

    • Creating and maintaining an up-to-date master address file.
    • Completing mail merges for the mailing, stuffing envelops, affixing the labels and stamps.
    • Keeping track of follow-up questions from potential contributors, via email and telephone.
    • Responding to the special needs of agencies accounting method (e.g., resending the letter with corrected name or to a different person).
    • Following up with the ASA to find out who has contributed.
    • Checking to see that the contributions match with the contributions the secretary knows about. Following up if there is a discrepancy.

    The corporate sponsorship process goes on for the entire year and lags into the next year. It is not a once a year type of event. This knowledge/history is lost with the change in secretary every two years. The follow-up gets confusing with the change in officers. Robie ended by stating that the success of this project will vary greatly based on the time a secretary-treasure has to spend on the process.

    Clyde and Robie have worked on improving this arduous task. They have designated a calendar year on the form to save confusion on which year the money that is being sent is intended. There was confusion by sponsor about which year they had sent money. For example, the IRS/SOI money did not get into accounting until April when it had been sent sometime around the first of the year. They have talked with ASA and we will try to get an ASA person designated on the form so that the fax does not wander around so much and can be better tracked. Robie has created a spreadsheet that attempts to keep track of the correspondence that occurs after the mailing.

    Clyde suggested changing the position to three year rotating position (secretary-treasure elect). He said he would talk with ASA about the possibility. The other option is to create a committee to work on this task.

  11. Income Committee and Wray Smith Scholarship Fund (Pat Doyle, Jana Asher, and Wendy Alvey)
  12. A protracted discussion was held about the proposal for the scholarship. The proposal was finally approved with the following modifications:

    Combine No. 3 and No. 5 (numbers were added to the proposal during the meeting)
    No. 2 Change the name to read: Quality of Accomplishments

    The ASA memorial session will be repeated for WSS February 14th, 2002.

    A current budget is attached ($11,396 as of 12-18-01). A discussion was held regarding the sponsor contributions and how that money should be spent. It was decided that sponsorship funds contributed each year will go toward the Wray Smith Scholarship Fund. This year the sum is $900.00.

    There was also a discussion about membership. There is some confusion on what is happening with the membership. Suzanne did not provide a report for this meeting. We want to discuss membership at the March meeting. ASA is improving their website and this information should be more readily available. The discussion covered increasing membership by appealing to a wider audience (e.g., military, physics, and international statistical agencies). This might be accomplished via broader solicitation of papers, scholarships, and requests for round table topics.

  13. New York JSM Program (Kirsten West and Nancy Bates )
  14. Round Tables (Nancy)

    1. Ann Vacca (Census): Contracting for Research and Development in Federal Statistical Agencies
    2. Brian Harris-Kojetin (OMB): The Use of Incentives in Government Surveys
    3. Stephanie Shipp (NIST): The Advanced Technology Program: Technical and Economic Criteria
    4. Laura Zayatz (Census): Have You Done Enough to Disclosure-Proof Your Public Use File?
    5. Charles Alexander (Census): something dealing with the Amer. Comm. Survey ...title TBA.

    2002 Sessions (Kirsten)

    Kirsten was not able to attend the meeting. She sent a report to Clyde. She said that we were successful winning one of the two additional invited slots. Therefore, we will have four invited sessions:

    1. Andy White: Taking the Census, Monday 2-4pm. Panelists: Norwood, King, Wachter and Prewitt
    2. Jane Gentleman: Meeting National & Regional Health Data Needs, Tuesday 10:30-12:30pm. Panelist: Sondik, Wolfson, Brown, and Catlin
    3. Lenny Gaines: American Community Survey, Wednesday 2-4pm
    4. Karen Woodrow-Lafield: Streets and Byways in all of New York. Thursday 8:30-10:40am.

    Thus far there are three topic-contributed sessions and we have been approached about cosponsoring several more joint session.

  15. Publications (John Dixon and Bill Wong)
  16. Bill reported that he had added a link to the Wray Smith Scholarship Fund. John Dixon reported that he was having trouble contacting social statistics about the next newsletter. It is their turn to publish the letter, which is due in December. Clyde said that he would talk with Fritz about this problem. Topics for the next newsletter include the Wray Smith Scholarship Fund and advertisement of the book from the confidentiality conference. The book should be out in January 2002.

  17. COPAFS (Mike L. Cohen and Wendy Alvey)
  18. Mike and Wendy published two articles in Amstat News (October and December). Mike reported on the last COPAFS meeting. Topics included Census 2000, electronic data surveillance, Census of Agriculture, and the confidentiality conference.

  19. Confidentiality Conference (Pat)
  20. Pat reported that the conference was full and had a long waiting list. The book should be out in January of 2002.

  21. Action Items
  22. Action Items:
    Clyde: Contact ASA about the secretary-treasure position
    Talk with Fritz about the joint newsletter
    Check with Suzanne about the membership coordinator, who is the current person?
    Check on who rotates off for the ASA Fellows Committee.

    Next Meeting

    We need to decide if we can hold the next meeting on March 7th, or determine if we need to move the meeting into April.

The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.

Secretary Treasurer, Robie Sangster





Government Statistics Section pages prepared by:     Bill Wong.
Last updated:     June 11, 2002.

Copyright ©2001 American Statistical Association, All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Statement | Disclaimer