Educating the Government Workforce to Lead with Statistics

• Activity Number: 623 - Educating the Government Workforce to Lead with Statistics
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2018 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): David Kinyon* and Andrew White* and Jeffrey Gonzalez* and Barbara Rater* and Susan Fortier* and Katherine J Thompson*
• Companies: Dept. of Energy and National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Agricultural Statistics Service and Statistics Canada and U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: government statistics; education; training

Abstract

We examine the challenges government agencies face in ensuring that their employees have the needed statistical and data science skills to lead in an increasingly data-driven world. Although government workforces include many statisticians who have been well trained in university mathematics and statistics departments, additional training is often needed to fill in specific skill gaps (e.g., survey sampling) and to keep an agency's statistical toolbox up to date. A growing number of federal employees who have been educated in non-statistical fields (e.g., geology, engineering) now find that their work requires the use of quantitative methods they didn't learn in school. Older employees may also need refresher training in the basic concepts of probability and statistical inference, even though they studied these topics in universities decades ago. This panel of representatives from several government agencies in the United States and Canada will discuss approaches to offering statistical training in the workplace. The panel will consider the costs and benefits of several alternative approaches and offer success stories as well as lessons learned.