Statistics and Public Policy

Informing Next-generation Federal Statistics

Modernizing the Federal Statistical System is both urgent and achievable. Declining survey response rates, escalating costs, and increasing demands for granular, timely data have created pressure for innovation across statistical agencies. Specifically, this Article Collection will focus on the development of novel frames and estimation techniques, where novel frames include the rosters and source lists from which samples are drawn and associated approaches to data collection, and novel estimation techniques cover the emerging methodologies that may be applied to the resulting data.

This Article Collection is motivated by ongoing efforts to modernize federal statistical infrastructure and to support a more interoperable, efficient, and resilient federal data ecosystem. Interest lies within research that helps inform the future development of statistical systems, including considerations related to evaluation, governance, scalability, risk mitigation, data integration, and implementation in operational environments.

The evidence accumulated in this Article Collection will show that novel tools work when implemented thoughtfully, and with attention to their distinct strengths and limitations. Although, proving methodological adequacy may not be sufficient to ensure adoption.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Administrative records
• Contextual imagery
• Estimation and sampling techniques
• Embedding models
• Large Language Models
• Privacy-enhancing technologies

We welcome original research articles, methodological papers, case studies, perspectives, and reviews that contribute to the advancement of Next-Generation Federal Statistics and support the modernization of official statistical systems.

Keywords: Estimation methods, Frame development, Data quality, Practical applications, Federal statistics

Manuscript Submissions:

Manuscript submission is open until 30th June 2027.

Please carefully review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript as it will be rejected if it does not fall within the scope of the journal.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. Manuscripts which do not fall within the scope of the journal will be rejected.

We are able to offer a 10% Discount to all authors, and have a limited number of 20% Discount codes only available for early submissions. It should be noted that discount codes must be entered in at the point of submission as they cannot be applied retroactively, nor can these be combined as only the higher valued discount would be applicable.

To submit your papers to this Article Collection, please:

1. Check "Yes" for the question, "Are you submitting your paper for a specific special issue or article collection?"
2. Select the relevant Article Collection from the drop-down menu under the question, "Informing Next-generation Federal Statistics"
3. Enter the Discount Code on the Final Page (Services) in the “Apply Discount Code” box on the right-hand side of the screen, otherwise this will not be applied to your submission, and you could be then subject to the journal’s Full APC Fee

Please contact Christopher Montgomery, Commissioning Editor regarding details on obtaining your discount codes, and with any other queries for this Article Collection.

Article Collection Guest Advisors

Dr. Amy O’Hara is a Research Professor in the Massive Data Institute and Executive Director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center at the McCourt School for Public Policy. She works on data governance, linkage, and privacy enhancing technologies. Her research focuses on methods to improve secure data access, particularly involving administrative data with applications in education, justice, and population measurement. O’Hara has published on topics including the measurement of income, longitudinal linkages to measure economic mobility, and the data infrastructure necessary to support government and academic research. Prior to joining Georgetown, O’Hara was a senior executive at the U.S. Census Bureau where she founded their administrative data curation and research unit. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame.

Senior Fellow Ms. Beth Jarosz has more than two decades of experience in demographic and socioeconomic analysis to support evidence-based decisions. Jarosz has published on topics including poverty, mortality, novel estimation techniques, the quality of administrative records, and disclosure avoidance for the 2020 Census. She has participated, as a speaker and as an organizer, in National Academies workshops on the American Community Survey, 2020 Census, and communicating the quality of federal statistics. Jarosz has been a senior program director at the Population Reference Bureau overseeing a portfolio of projects tracking subnational demographic, socioeconomic, and health trends. Prior to that she was a researcher at the San Diego Association of Governments. She received her M.A. in Demographic and Social Analysis from the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Daniel L. Cork is a Senior Fellow at the Massive Data Institute (MDI) at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. He joined the MDI staff in April 2025 after a nearly 25-year career in progressively senior roles at the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where he directed major consensus studies on the decennial census, crime statistics, and the integrity of national data systems. His CNSTAT work included serving as study director or program officer for almost all census- or American Community Survey-related studies between 2000 and 2025, including the Panels on Residence Rules in the Decennial Census and Research on Future Census Methods (2010 Planning panel); the Standing Committee on Reengineering Census Methods; and the panels tasked with evaluating the quality of the 2000, 2010, and 2020 Censuses. He also directed the Panel to Review the Programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Panel on Modernizing the Nation's Crime Statistics, and the Panel on Cybercrime Classification and Measurement. His research and policy engagement spans the design and evaluation of large-scale federal surveys and censuses, the use of administrative records in official statistics, residence rules and coverage measurement, geographical analysis, and the governance of the federal statistical system. He has a B.S. in statistics from George Washington University and an M.S. in statistics and a joint Ph.D. in statistics and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.