IA Welcomes Return of Trump's OMB Head Vought

In the US, the Insights Association has welcomed the Senate's re-confirmation of Russ Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), with responsibilities including census funding, competitive sourcing and federal statistical policy. Vought held the office during President Trump's first term.

The OMB is the largest unit within the Executive Office of the US President, and while its primary function is to produce the President's budget, it also has a role in checking that agency policies, programs and procedures comply with the administration's policies, and in co-ordinating inter-agency policy initiatives.

Washington, DC-based Howard Fienberg, the IA's lobbyist for the marketing research and data analytics industry, says Vought's leadership on competitive sourcing could help 'reduce the aggressive federal government competition with the private sector, such as in the Census Household Panel, and create more opportunities for private sector jobs and contracts in the insights industry while bringing greater cost efficiency and effectiveness to the government's activities'.

The IA will work with Vought 'to bolster the resources' for the U.S. Census Bureau's core Constitutional activities, the ACS and the decennial Census itself, according to Fienberg, who adds: 'As we pass the midpoint of the decade, the time to ramp up funding for the 2030 Census is now, with the census field tests already looming next year. Chronic funding interruptions in the last decade forced the Bureau to cancel most of its field tests, including in rural areas and tribal reservations, leading to dramatic cost uncertainty when it came time to roll out the full headcount of our population'. On statistical policy Fienberg, who is the IA's Senior VP Advocacy, says that over the long term Director Vought 'can help the chief statistician's office at OMB to modernize federal statistical policy and save taxpayer dollars, by fixing current policies that discourage online research (which is currently how most research in the world is conducted) and make it challenging to incentivize response from research subjects'.

The appointment was confirmed in the Senate last Thursday by 53 votes to 47. Republicans argue Vought is the man to lead the drastic cuts to federal spending and regulations promised by the Trump team, while Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer described him as 'the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda' and said the appointment was a 'triple-header of disaster for hard-working Americans'.

Web sites: www.census.gov and www.insightsassociation.org .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.