We also recognize that we have a responsibility to taxpayers to make maximum use of limited funds, and a responsibility to our respondents to make sure that their time and attention is used to full advantage. For this reason, we seek to maximize the use of data that we do collect. We continue to develop new approaches to making data available in the detail needed by researchers and analysts, without compromising our responsibility to avoid disclosure of information about individuals. In a moment, I will comment on the concept of sharing information between protected statistical data centers as one solution. Each is important to an efficient statistical system that produces analytically useful products.
Federal statistics serve multiple purposes.
Within HHS, for example, statistics are used for guiding medical research, tracking public health objectives, measuring progress under civil rights laws, allocating grant funds, and safeguarding the Medicare trust fund. As Director of NCHS and as Senior Advisor to the Secretary, I work closely with the HHS Data Council in an ongoing effort to integrate statistical efforts within HHS, and to bring a more strategic focus to meeting the information needs of our programs and initiatives. Each of the statistical agencies also has a distinct role in coordinating statistical efforts across Departments as well, and I have been impressed as a relative newcomer by the enthusiasm of my statistical agency counterparts for strengthening ties among our agencies. I feel that the strength of a decentralized system in which data is collected close to its use, assuring relevance, is a solid foundation to build on in tapping into each other's unique expertise, resources, and technologies. Many of the confidentiality statutes currently in place were written narrowly to address statistical agencies one by one, rather than to apply to the system as a whole.