Federal statistical coordination today: a disaster or a disgrace?

The aim of central coordination of federal statistical policy is to assure the most efficient use of the resources of a very decentralized statistical system. This goal has become more elusive over the past thirty years, even as the need for standards and order in data bases among public and private decision makers has increased--in health, energy, justice, environmental, and various other regulatory policy areas. Shortsighted dislocations and political interference have deprofessionalized and decimated our ability to control, rather than to destroy, the governance of bureaucracy.