1. Governments Division Partnering with the SDCs Presented to the SDC Steering Committee February 17, 2011 Kimberly Moore Assistant Division Chief, Recurring Programs Christopher Pece Senior Technical Advisor

2. 2 Introduction to Governments Division Main Purposes of Governments Division programs –Provide economic statistics about governments (approximately 90,000 state and local governments) –Are the public counterpart to business, industry, and services economic data –Follow the activity of governments over time Response is voluntary Virtually no confidentiality restrictions

3. 3 Governments Division Programs Base Programs: Census of Governments/related annual and quarterly programs –Finance Data – revenues, expenditures, debt, & assets –Employment Data – number of employees & payroll –Organizational Data – number of governments & characteristics Reimbursable Programs –17 programs conducted on an annual, biannual, or quarterly basis

4. 4 Base Programs

5. 5 Reimbursable Programs

6. 6 Importance of GOVS Data Tells the story of the fiscal welfare of federal, state, and local government Constitutes 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product Are the only source of comprehensive, uniform statistics on governments – we are the gold standard Helps policy makers make important, informed decisions

7. State Budgets: The Day of Reckoning 60 Minutes, CBS News December 2010

8. How GOVS Collects Data Paper Form Web Instrument Administrative-type Records Supplemental Sources –Manual compilation of government financial standards –Manual compilation of other available sources (e.g., Mergent’s, Moody’s, other debt-related information) 8

9. Manual Compilation A Day in the Life of a Governments Division Analyst 9 A Day in the Life of a Governments Division Analyst

10. GOVS /SDC Recent Partnerships State of Tennessee Data Collection GOVS U.S. Territories Project 10

11. Future GOVS/SDC Partnership Opportunities Increase state and local government response Advocate GOVS data and educate users Promote the citation of GOVS data when contacted by media/researchers Provide feedback on dissemination plans/tools 11

12. 12 Questions for You What do you need from us to help you? What materials can we provide to best explain our data? How can we best disseminate our data?

13. Questions for Us? Kimberly Moore Assistant Division Chief, Recurring Programs kimberly.p.moore@census.gov 301-763-7643 Christopher Pece Senior Technical Advisor christopher.pece@census.gov 301-763-7330 13