Initiative #8: Economic Indicator Search Tool

Develop the Economic Indicator Search Tool.

Other Information:

Overview: The United States Census Bureau produces several of the nation’s most closely-watched economic indicators of the health of the U.S. economy. They are key inputs to the national accounts. They are used by numerous monetary and budgetary decision makers, economists, business analysts and researchers for making corporate investment decisions. When they are released each month and quarter, they move financial markets. Today, more than ever, our customers demand and expect to receive these numbers via high value, machine-readable datasets that can be easily accessed and manipulated. Yet, until now, these crown jewels of economic data have been disseminated mainly via static, PDF-based reports. To address rising customer expectations for more usable economic indicator data, the Census Bureau developed the Economic Indicator Search Tool. By September 2011, all economic indicators were available to the public via this searchable database. This new tool is now in production with updates provided each month and quarter on the day of release, providing data users with on-demand, detailed economic indicator data at their fingertips. The new tool is a long-awaited one-stop shop for accessing data from the economic indicators, and a welcome alternative to frustrating searches. It is easy enough for anyone to use – just follow the numbers. You can get data fast--and then export it into a spreadsheet. The tool provides modern features and highly granular data. It uses state-of-the art open source software and employs modern development techniques that make it inexpensive to produce. Benefits to US Census Bureau customers include: * Easy and fast data searches, going beyond PDFs, to provide a one-stop shop for economic indicator data on demand; * Internet-based searches that provide quick and smart access to customer-selected data; * Data that can be downloaded in multiple formats for further manipulation or charting; * State-of-the-art Web features with access to data or explanatory notes in one click, and * Highly granular time series data that are updated with each new data release. Feedback on this new application has been very positive; the number of internet hits has grown by 800 percent since the application first went live last year. The U.S. Census Bureau plans to stay in close contact with its customers to elicit new requirements for this tool. We anticipate improvements to the interface and navigation, increasing survey coverage beyond the economic indicators, incorporating data visualization features such as user-defined data display groups, introducing moving averages to supplement the basic period-to-period changes, and linking the data to an economic dashboard on the census.gov main page as part of the overall improvements being made to the Census Bureau website.

Stakeholder(s):

• U.S. Census Bureau


• Monetary Decision Makers


• Budgetary Decision Makers


• Economists


• Business Analysts


• Researchers

Objective(s):

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