ICSP Presentation

From Statipedia

Contents 1 Statipedia 2 Vision 3 Examples of Statipedia Uses 4 Wiki practices and successes 5 Next Steps

Statipedia

Statipedia - a platform for collaboration across statistical agencies.

Presentation for Interagency Council on Statistical Policy, 3PM, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, at BLS conference center.

• Barry D. Nussbaum (Chief Statistician, Environmental Protection Agency)
• Peter B. Meyer (Office of Productivity, Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• James A. Buszuwski (Office of Compensation and Working Conditions, Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Michael J. Messner (Office of Water, Environmental Protection Agency (Wiki Page))

Vision

• Tools and workspaces for statistical staff across agencies
  • With source material for economists and statisticians
  • Not for general public; not for sensitive materials
  • Eventually: Available to new employees; Version control system; Search engine; Statistical software; and more
• To start with: a wiki -- our pilot project
  • Virtually zero cost to maintain the software (MediaWiki software, same as used by Wikipedia) hosted by EPA
  • Users don't need special software, just web browser
  • Security includes user registration and login, version control, rollback capability, user-blocking (if needed)

Examples of Statipedia Uses

• Repository of definitions of government/statistical terms
• Technical information
  • Seasonal adjustment
  • Occupation and industry classification
  • Systemic risk
  • Handbook information brought to life ; Bibliographic categories
  • Categories of data sets (e.g. on individuals)
  • Probability Distributions Beta Distribution, Dirichlet Distribution
  • Disease Mapping, Spatial data analysis, Methods for censored data, Markov Chain Monte Carlo
  • Agency-Specific Guidance
    • EPA Guidelines for Regulatory Environmental Modeling & Quality Assurance
    • NCHS Guidelines for Ensuring the Quality of Information Disseminated to the Public
    • Bureau of Transportation Statistics Statistical Guidelines and Standards
• Personal Pages
  • Those willing to network and share expertise can build their own user pages, including keywords for areas of technical expertise.
  • Anyone needing help in a technical area can quickly look for it here
• Software Pages (for example, R)
  • Standard format for the home pages of software package/system/program. software Category: Statistical software
  • User groups for government users, including online advice and source code
    • These would include links to online resources:
      • Blogs (for example R-Bloggers
      • User groups (for example the DC-area UseR Group)
      • Wikis (for example, R Wiki and SAS Community Wiki, see recent edits)
• Miscellaneous (anything that can help us work more effectively, for example,
  • reducing E-mail attachments

Wiki practices and successes

We learned from and can copy other systems

• can copy norms, rules, templates, extensions, bots from wikipedia, potentially from Intellipedia, Diplopedia, Bureaupedia, Techipedia, MAX, Eurostat, and OECD

We are proposing a platform which is:

• scientific ; global ; standard; high-morale ; meets all the technical standards; scalable; cheap now and forever; open-source; the right one scientifically ; the standard in our businesses of science and government ; could be swept naturally into SCOP when the time is right

Next Steps

1. Activate Statipedia on EPA-Extranet
2. Convene core group of 6-10 statisticians & economists @ "Barn_Raising"
3. Build the wiki with core group over 2-month period
4. Add interested registered users and continue to build the wiki for additional 4 months
5. Success criteria for a Statipedia pilot project