United States DEPARTMENT of Commerce

A P P E N D I x C : P e r f o r m a n c e M e a s u r e s D e f i n i t i o n s
Performance Measure:
Meet or exceed the overall federal score of customer satisfaction on the American Customer Satisfaction Index
(ACSI)
The University of Michigan conducts the ACSI in cooperation with other groups. It tracks trends in customer satisfaction and
provides benchmarks that can be compared across industries and between the public and private sectors. The Census Bureau
traditionally focuses on key communications, services, and products: data products, Web products, and overall customer service
as these relate to customers’ perceived quality, expectations, overall customer satisfaction, complaints, and loyalty. Results from
the ACSI are available during the first quarter of the fiscal year.
Data Source
Frequency
Data Storage
Internal Controls
Data Limitations
Actions to be Taken
Census Bureau data users at State Data Centers, Business Information Data Centers, Census Information Centers, and Regional Federal
Depository Libraries.
Annually
Primary storage system is a mainframe computer at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Data are collected electronically and cross-tabulated. Interviewers are continuously monitored with supervisors randomly listening
in on interviews. The computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system will not accept wild scores, out of range of allowable
scales.
Sample size determines the limits of statements that can be made based on the data. All Census Bureau-related ACSI reports are careful
to report confidence intervals.
Continue quarterly reviews of performance data.
Performance Outcome: Promote a better understanding of the U.S. economy by providing the most timely, relevant,
and accurate economic data in an objective and cost-effective manner (ESA/BEA)
Performance Measure:
Timeliness: Reliability of delivery of economic data (number of scheduled releases issued on time)
The importance of ESA’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data as an ingredient for sound economic decision-making requires
BEA to deliver data into the hands of decisionmakers on schedule. BEA has made significant improvements in its information
processing systems so as to continue to post its principal economic indicators on the BEA Web site at release time, as well as
upload volumes of supporting documentation and tables that were previously unavailable until days after the release. In addition,
BEA established an e-mail subscription service that allows users to sign up to receive prompt e-mail delivery of gross domestic
product (GDP), international trade, state personal income, gross state product, local area personal income, and other major
economic measures at the time of their release.
Data Source
Frequency
Data Storage
Internal Controls
Data Limitations
Actions to be Taken
A schedule of release dates for the calendar year is published each fall in the Survey of Current Business and is posted on the BEA Web
site. BEA maintains a record of subsequent actual release dates.
Quarterly
BEA maintains the schedule of future release dates and the record of actual release dates. Both sets of information are available on
the BEA Web site.
Scheduled and actual release dates are a matter of public record and can be verified via the Internet at www.bea.gov.
Not all releases may be included in the published annual schedule because their release dates cannot be established that far in
advance.
FY 2008 target will be added when the schedule is made available to OMB and published in the Survey of Current Business in the fall of
the preceding year.
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