PolicyMap Goes to the Census

In our continuing effort to bring you the most timely and meaningful data available, last week Elizabeth Nash and Katie Nelson of the PolicyMap team attended a Census training on federal statistics in Washington DC. In four days of hands-on training, we sharpened our skills with specialists from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Economic Census, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Center for Health Statistics.

We learned a lot to deepen our understanding of the data we provide, and are excited about several new possibilities for PolicyMap including:

• Five-year ACS estimates are scheduled to be available in December. This will mean we can finally update the much outdated 2000 Decennial Census indicators!
• The 2010 Census will offer new geography boundary files for PolicyMap. So far we know to expect many new counties in Alaska, lots of changes to Census zip-code boundaries or ZCTAs, and possibly new and updated criteria for urbanized areas.

This 4-day training is provided for free by the Census several times a year. For more information on the training itself or if you are interested in signing up see: http://www.census.gov/mso/www/training/