The IQA directed OMB to issue guidelines to federal agencies covered by the Paperwork Reduction Act designed to ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity” of information disseminated to the public. The IQA also directed OMB to include in its guidelines requirements for agencies to (1) develop their own information quality guidelines, (2) establish administrative mechanisms for affected persons to seek correction of information that does not comply with OMB’s guidelines, and (3) annually report to OMB the number and nature of complaints they receive regarding the accuracy of the information they disseminate. Prior to the IQA, there were several governmentwide actions aimed at improving agency data. For example, Statistical Policy Directive No. 2, first issued in 1952, required statistical agencies to inform users of conceptual or other limitations of the data, including how the data compare with similar statistics. In 1996, the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology—an OMB-sponsored interagency committee dedicated to improving the quality of federal statistics—established a subcommittee to review the measurement and reporting of data quality in federal data collection programs. The results of the subcommittee’s work were published in a 2001 report that addressed such issues as what information on sources of error federal data collection programs should provide, and how they should provide it. For all federal government information collections, the 1995 amendments to the Paperwork Reduction Act called on federal agencies to manage information resources with the goal of improving “the integrity, quality, and utility of information to all users within and outside the agency.” OMB’s IQA guidelines were issued in final form in February 2002. They required agencies subject to the IQA to take such steps as issue information quality guidelines designed to ensure the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information disseminated to the public; establish administrative mechanisms for affected persons to seek correction of information they believe is not in compliance with the guidelines; report annually to the Director of OMB on the number and nature of complaints received regarding compliance with the guidelines and how the agencies handled those complaints; and designate an official responsible for ensuring compliance with OMB’s guidelines. The OMB guidelines defined quality as an encompassing term comprising utility, which is the usefulness of the information to its intended users; integrity, which refers to the security of information and its protection from unauthorized access or revision; and objectivity, which addresses both presentation (i.e., whether the information is being presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner) and substance (i.e., whether the information is accurate, reliable, and unbiased). In addition, OMB addresses transparency within the definition of objectivity and utility. As recognized in OMB’s guidelines, agencies that disseminate influential scientific, financial, or statistical information must demonstrate a high degree of transparency about data and methods. These measures are in place to facilitate the information’s reproducibility by an outside party or reanalysis of an agency’s results. The National Research Council of the National Academies considers transparency a key principle for federal statistical agencies, and stated in a recent report that transparency, which it defines as “an openness about the sources and limitations of the data,” is particularly important for instilling credibility and trust among data users and providers. As an agency within USDA, NASS is required to comply with the IQA. One statistical program administered by NASS is the quinquennial Census of Agriculture. According to NASS, the census provides a detailed picture of U.S. farms and ranches every 5 years and is the only source of uniform, comprehensive agricultural data at the county level. The results are published in 18 reports divided among three categories: Geographic Area Series, Census Quick Stats, and Specialty Products and Special Studies. Users of this information include federal agencies (for program and statistical purposes), farm organizations, businesses, universities, state departments of agriculture, elected representatives, legislative bodies at all levels of government, and academia. The next Census of Agriculture is scheduled for 2007. Our objectives were to (1) review how NASS met OMB’s guidelines covering the IQA and (2) examine the transparency of the documentation behind the Census of Agriculture’s processes and products, including the recently completed work on the 2002 Census, and the efforts currently underway for the 2007 Census. To achieve both of these objectives, we reviewed OMB’s and NASS’s information quality guidelines, Census of Agriculture reports, submissions to OMB, and other relevant documents. We also interviewed NASS officials about how NASS conducted the 2002 Census and how it is planning for the 2007 Census. The officials included the NASS Administrator, Associate Administrator, and Deputy Administrator for Programs and Products. In addition, to evaluate the transparency of Census of Agriculture products, we reviewed eight census reports and the Frequently Asked Questions area of the 2002 Census Web site, to determine the extent to which NASS followed its own procedures for ensuring the transparency of its information products. NASS’s IQA guidelines define transparency as, “a clear description of the methods, data sources, assumptions, outcomes, and related information that allows a data user to understand how an information product was designed and produced.” NASS’s guidelines state that its survey activities include such activities as sample design, questionnaire design, pre-testing, analysis of sampling, and imputation of missing data. However, the guidelines were not clear as to the specific activities to be documented. Consequently, we reviewed the practices employed by such statistical agencies as the National Academies of Sciences, International Monetary Fund, and U.S. Census Bureau, and developed a set of 20 practices associated with transparent documentation that encompassed the items NASS laid out in its own guidelines. The practices include such actions as defining data items, discussing sample design, and describing how the content of the survey differs from past iterations (see app. II). We looked for the presence or absence of these practices in 9 out of the 18 census reports and related forms of data that NASS disseminates, and verified the results with a second, independent analysis. In instances where a report did not include a particular documentation practice, we reviewed whether the report instead informed data users where to obtain this information. We chose these 9 reports because they all stem from the original census data collection, represent different product categories, and were available on the census Web site as of February 1, 2005. To obtain an external perspective of how NASS processes and products address the IQA guidelines, we interviewed six data users from different types of agricultural and research organizations. We selected these data users from lists of registrants for USDA and NASS outreach meetings within the past 5 years. We selected these six data users because they use information from the census on a regular basis. Moreover, these data users attended the most recent NASS outreach meeting, which specifically addressed the 2002 and 2007 Censuses. Some data users had also provided NASS with feedback on the content of the agricultural census. Their views cannot be projected to the larger population of census data users. We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Secretary of Agriculture. On September 8, 2005, we received the NASS Administrator’s written comments and have reprinted them in appendix I. They are addressed in the Agency Comments and Our Evaluation section of this report. NASS fulfilled the various procedural responsibilities and reporting requirements under OMB’s guidelines. For example, NASS released its own IQA guidelines for public comment on March 27, 2002. NASS officials stated they received no substantive comments on them and OMB approved the guidelines with only minimal changes. The officials also noted that no revisions have been made since then. Table 1 shows in greater detail how NASS addressed OMB’s guidelines. NASS’s IQA guidelines define transparency as, “a clear description of the methods, data sources, assumptions, outcomes, and related information that allows a data user to understand how an information product was designed and produced.” NASS’s guidelines also note that “NASS will make the methods used to produce information as transparent as possible” and that its “internal guidelines call for clear documentation of data and methods used in producing estimates and forecasts. . . .” To assess the extent to which NASS processes help ensure the transparency of the information it publishes, we examined key publications from the 2002 Census of Agriculture. Census reports vary in terms of scope and intended audience (see table 2). On the one hand, the United States Summary and State Data report contains over 100 data tables, an introduction, and four appendices. On the other hand, County Profile reports summarize each county’s agricultural situation on two pages. Overall, we assessed eight census reports within three product categories, as well as the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the 2002 Census Web site, to determine the extent to which NASS followed its own guidelines for ensuring the transparency of its products. As shown in table 2, the transparency of the data documentation in the reports we reviewed varied between the Geographic Area Series reports—which are the most comprehensive of NASS’s products and addressed 15 of the 20 data documentation practices—and the Specialty Products and Special Studies which, depending on the specific product, addressed no more than 1 of the practices. All eight reports and the FAQ Web site lacked a discussion of four documentation practices, including the following: 1. Questionnaire testing. NASS produced a separate, internal report that discusses questionnaire testing in detail; however, publicly available census publications do not address this topic. 2. Limitations of the data. NASS does not discuss data limitations in the census reports we reviewed. 3. Impact of imputations, by item. When a statistical agency receives a report form with missing values, it normally estimates or “imputes” those values based on comparable data sources such as a similar farm operation.