Charter of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics

BACKGROUND

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (Forum) was founded through the initiative of partnering agencies in 1994. In April 1997, Executive Order 13045 established the Forum as a formally recognized cross-agency body (Federal Register, Vol. 62, No. 78, pp. 19885-19888). The executive order states that the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB Director) shall convene the Forum, "which will include representatives from the appropriate Federal and statistics research agencies."

MISSION

The mission of the Forum is to bring together Federal agencies that share a common interest in improving and disseminating information related to children and families. The Forum encourages cooperation and collaboration among Federal agencies, and promotes communications among and between statistical communities of data producers, researchers, policymakers, and the public to improve data quality and utility. As a key focus of the Forum's work is the development, publication, and dissemination of federal statistics on children and families, it operates within the guidelines covering federal statistical agencies.

Mandated responsibilities. Executive Order 13045 assigns to the Forum the responsibility of producing "a compendium ("Report") of the most important indicators of the well-being of the Nation's children. . . . The Report shall be published by the Forum in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development." By Executive Order 13296, that report is to be produced biennially.

OBJECTIVES

To fulfill its mission, the Forum works to achieve the following objectives:

  • widen access to information on the well-being of children and families in the United States through periodic publications and other means;
  • identify information gaps and data inconsistencies;
  • investigate new methods for obtaining and disseminating data; and
  • investigate questions of data quality and accessibility.