BEA's strategic plan for 2001-2005

Survey of Current Business, May, 2002

BEA published a preliminary strategic plan in the December 2001 SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS and invited public comment. The plan, which incorporated suggestions from BEA's customers, staff, and partner statistical agencies, presented the elements of BEA's planned work and initiatives through 2005. As development of the preliminary strategic plan neared completion, Secretary of Commerce Donald E. Evans and Secretary of Treasury Paul H. O'Neill asked BEA to convene experts in the fields of economics and business and solicit their opinions and insights on the expansions and improvements to the national accounts necessary for capturing the changing economy. Participants in that meeting, held in November, 2001, included members of the Administration and other Federal Government and private-sector experts. The private-sector experts comprised the members of BEA's Advisory Committee--distinguished economists and business people--and two invited guests, both distinguished economists.

Abstracts of the comments of those attending the meeting follow. They begin with Commerce Under Secretary for Economic Affairs Kathleen Cooper's introductory remarks and end with BEA Advisory Committee Chair Professor William Nordhaus's overview of targets for developing and broadening the national accounts. The comments reprinted here range from specific suggestions for improvements in the accounts to broad suggestions for recasting and expanding the accounts.

The revised plan is presented here, beginning on page 20, in table form by national economic account. The table summarizes each component of the plan and provides milestones through 2005 that serve as checks on progress toward the stated goals.

The strategic plan will be updated later this year to add milestones for FY 2006 and to reflect changes in priorities and opportunities. The activities listed in the revised table and the timing of the milestones are based on the assumption that BEA will receive adequate budget funding for each of those years.

I would like to thank the members of the BEA Advisory Committee and the expert commentators and the customers and other respondents for their valuable contributions to the refinement and further development of BEA's strategic plan.

J. Steven Landefeld Director, Bureau of Economic Analysis

Kathleen B. Cooper

Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, U.S. Department of Commerce

I want to thank each of you for your attendance today. One of the pleasures of public service is to be able to draw on the thinking of such a distinguished group of economists for their insights-members of the Bureau of Economic Analysis advisory committee and special guests for this brainstorming session, Marina Whitman and Robert Hall. Let me also welcome and acknowledge Richard Clarida from the Treasury Department and Randy Kroszner from the CEA, who will share their perspectives with us. I must thank as well Lawrence Slifman from the Federal Reserve for joining us and for providing input on behalf of the Federal Reserve.

This is a brainstorming session, not a place for speeches. We would appreciate your expert evaluation on the design and composition of the national income and product accounts. Secretary Evans, Deputy Secretary Bodman, and I are committed to working with you to ensure that our national accounts meet the high standards demanded by today's economy.

During today's session, Richard Clarida will report to you that Treasury Secretary O'Neill shares these goals. Steve Landefeld, the Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and I expect this session to be the first of several and hope you can participate throughout and share your recommendations to help guide our future work on the national accounts.

We have already begun a number of important changes here at BEA to improve the national accounts. Working closely with the President and the Congress, we received funding to begin the important task of upgrading the GDP to improve our measures on important sectors of the economy, including the impact of IT and telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, financial derivatives, and various forms of compensation. In addition, BEA took initial steps to address long-overdue and urgently-needed improvements to the reliability of its GDP processing system, while at the same time developing and beginning to implement a comprehensive plan to improve its performance. Other changes over the past year have been important first steps in providing electronic filing for respondents to BEA surveys and easier and expanded access to BEA,s Web site through interactive and easily downloadable data sets, which has been widely praised by data users.

In the upcoming year, BEA, with the support of the Administration, will be working on a number of initiatives to improve the quality and timeliness of economic statistics. Your contributions today will be important in fleshing out these activities. Indeed, BEA has made excellent strides in updating its strategic plan. What we learn from you will help us put the finishing touches on it.