NICS as America’s Data Exchange: Building a Foundation for Action

The National Infrastructure for Community Statistics (NICS) Community of Practice (CoP) had a quarterly meeting to discuss the progress report on the development of NICS since the last gathering of the CoP in November 2005.

During this session we:

unveiled the new NICSweb.org website,
discussed tools for protecting data confidentiality,
and began to organize NICS CoP Special Interest Groups (SIGs).

SIGs are intended to engage members of the NICS CoP in preparing the groundwork for the implementation and use of NICS in individual fields, such as housing, the environment, and community development. Each SIG would ascertain the steps that need to be taken for NICS to meet its field’s needs in terms of the availability, usability, and comparability of datasets.

Who Should Attend

• Experts in data analysis, exchange, and warehousing
• Information technology developers
• Chief information officers in the public or private sector
• Analysts and managers of community information systems
• Federal, state, regional, and local Officials Working in information collection, analysis, or information policy
• Knowledge management or business intelligence System Managers

About NICS & the NICS CoP
NICS is intended as a nationwide Web-based broker facilitating public and private decisionmakers’ access to detailed, current community-level statistics from thousands of local, state, federal, and commercial data sources. The NICS CoP is comprised of over 200 individuals—from a variety of government, nonprofit, and commercial realms—working collaboratively on the design, construction, and governance of NICS.
Find out more about NICS