A federal employee spoke to a business gathering the other day. She was from the US Census Bureau and spoke about the data bases openly managed and maintained for all to see. This is data collected by the government for both the people and the government to use.
Specifically, she spoke on demographic data of residents found in most every geographic territory of the nation. By zip code, municipality, county, state, region, multi-state, nation and so on. Also by age, gender, nationality, education level, income and household income, and much, much more.
Why? Why is this data collected? Because making policies, developing service programs, and governing the many peoples of America relies on data, lots of it. It is shared with the business community, academic world and anyone else who wants to use this information. Businesses use it to map markets in which to sell their products and services. Likewise, nonprofit organizations need this data to accurately map where their clients are and how to better serve their needs. Academia needs this data for any number of reasons in understanding people, their cultures, their economic determinants, and so forth.
The world runs on data. The government collects it to support worthy purposes.
The data is transparent and does not divulge personal information identifiable to specific persons; only masses of people living in specific areas.
The spokesman was very good. She understood her subject and knew how to access and use the data. Furthermore, she and her colleagues at the US Census Bureau work hard to help anyone to use their data as best as possible.
I remember feeling proud of her and her agency. I felt proud of public employees doing a good job for the good of the people.
I reflected on the thousands of people I worked with at the University of Illinois – Chicago. Clerks, custodians, tradesmen, secretaries, teachers, researchers, professors, academics of all types and specialties. Administrators, too, the kind that endeavor to run an efficient institution to support its long-term goals and objectives for the good of the people. Those people do a great job. The accumulative effect of their work helps Illinois and America prosper. Modern engineering, technology and medical breakthroughs are discovered in their labs. Classrooms prepare students for careers that fulfill their interests and abilities as an end to meet society’s needs now and far into the future.
For the most part these employees do a solid job. They accomplish much.
Sure there are rotten apples in every barrel; that is a reality of life not often avoided. Managing the whole of the institution, however, should and does reduce problems created by those bad apples. We don’t characterize an entire institution by the rotten apples; no, we characterize the agency based on the exciting results of its work, its accomplishments.
Having said that, we tend to forget that many of these institutions are funded by government authority and taxes - public schools, libraries, fire districts, park districts, colleges and universities, water and sewer districts, too. These are all part of government, not the legislative portion, but of the service side of things.
When political ideologies fight over the role of government and its size of operations, we tend to forget the common utilities represented by government. Those mentioned above are very important to the success of our nation. Yet they are not legislative.
Social services are often a critical segment of government, both local, regional and national. Health and Family Services are an example. Yet we hear broadside complaints of failures and law suits for conspicuous problems. Funny, those same problems could easily be addressed with proper staffing, training and funding. But such dollars are not made available to those agencies by the very political debaters who claim such services should not be borne by government.
If not them, who? Churches? Nonprofit charities and foundations? Why only them? Are they up to the job to maintain human dignity and promise? And equal access? If they fail, who really fails? Those agencies or we the people who did not step up to the plate to help fellow human beings?
If debaters argue private resources should be used for these endeavors, then we must ask: Are you among those who are donating the funds, energy, ideas, services and materials that make such help possible? And if not you, then who should be doing this?
I feel we the people ought to take care of each other. Government programs can be much more efficiently organized to perform such functions. The scale of the job alone requires a large and resourceful entity. Last I heard, churches and Foundations haven’t fixed these problems. Helped, yes; fixed? No.
That’s why I feel government should be sized to address our nation’s and region’s problems expertly. With as little waste as possible, but certainly with the resources necessary to do the best job. We owe that to our fellow. Heck, we owe this to ourselves.
October 22, 2019
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