Agencies prepare budget requests each year, reflecting proposed programme changes for the coming fiscal year. These are reviewed by the parent departments and included in the departments' budget requests to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB reviews statistical agency requests for conformity with the President's budget goals and government-wide statistical priorities. Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, OMB also reviews all proposed collections of information involving 10 or more respondents in the public, including statistical surveys, to ensure they are designed efficiently and the data collected are likely to be useful for their intended purpose. Agencies decide the scope and content of their publications, subject to budget constraints, broad OMB guidelines on the dissemination of information, and OMB statistical standards and guidelines.
Most statistical agencies collect information under statutes prohibiting disclosure.
Statutes prohibiting public disclosure vary in the extent to which they permit inter-agency use of information for statistical purposes. For example, information collected by the Bureau of the Census under 13 U.S.C. is accessible only to employees of the Bureau of the Census. By contrast, the law protecting the confidentiality of the Department of Agriculture's statistical data collections permits the data to be used for statistical purposes by other agencies. Statutory authority exists to require response of the population to economic censuses and to certain other surveys, mainly of businesses. The major household surveys and many major economic surveys are conducted without mandatory reporting authority.