Executive Office of the President
Office of Management and Budget
Washington, DC 20503
For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, May 21, 1996
WHITE HOUSE UNVEILS "BRIEFING ROOMS"
Gives Americans Easy Access to Federal Statistics
The White House unveiled today the Federal Statistics Briefing
Rooms, making Federal statistics much more
accessible to average Americans through the White House Home Page
on the Internet.
"This service will give Americans quick, easy access to key
current economic and social statistics," Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) Director Alice M. Rivlin said at a
morning news briefing, where she was joined
by Sally Katzen, Administrator of OMB's Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, and the heads of various
statistical agencies. "It is a prime example of Federal agencies
working together to improve service for their
customers."
The briefing rooms, at http://www.whitehouse.gov, include two
rooms -- the Economic Statistics Briefing
Room and the Social Statistics Briefing Room. They present
current releases of selected economic and social
indicators organized not by agency, but themes -- e.g., Output,
Income, Employment, Production, Money, Prices,
Transportation, International Statistics, Demographics, Education,
Health, and Crime.
Each theme includes key data series on a single World Wide Web
(WWW) page that, in turn, provides hyperlinks
to WWW pages at the source agencies' Web sites. Included in each
theme are the most current release, graphic
displays of the series over time, brief phrases highlighting the
trends or noteworthy aspects of the current release,
and the name of the agency that produced the statistic.
"Now we have, for the first time, the beginnings of `one-stop
shopping' for Federal statistics," Katzen said. "We
also have established links to the agencies that generate the
statistics so that those who wish can explore in depth at
the source."
In the past, the decentralized structure of the Federal
Government's statistical system sometimes made it hard for
Americans -- even frequent data users, such as economic
forecasters or social science researchers -- to locate and
access the information of particular interest to them.
In the last three years, however, many statistical agencies have
made great progress in developing easy access to
their own data and databases through the Internet, and in
particular, the World Wide Web. Data users accessing
information from one Federal agency may even find out about
related statistics available from another agency,
thanks to cross-agency links that some agencies are providing.
Now, the Economic Statistics and Social Statistics Briefing Rooms
will further ease and speed access to the
Nation's information resources. They were developed by OMB's
Interagency Council on Statistical Policy, with
technical coordination and development from the Office of Science
and Technology Policy and the Office of
Administration.
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