# Statistical Officials Crosswalk Twenty-four federal agencies are required by law to designate a **Statistical Official**. This is an ASCII crosswalk of all twenty-four — who holds the job, what the job actually is at that agency, and what the law gives the person holding it. The answer to the last question is the reason the map exists. [[Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act]] § 101(a)(2) added **5 U.S.C. § 314**, two sentences long, titled "Statistical expertise." It tells each agency head to designate someone "to advise on statistical policy, techniques, and procedures," and then says that agency officials "**may** consult with any such statistical official **as necessary**." That is the whole of it. The section confers no authority, sets no term, specifies no reporting line, and attaches no protection against removal. The only duty it creates runs to other people, and it is optional. The second thing the statute does is split the job in two, and this split is written into the text rather than left to agencies: the official must be *the head of any statistical agency or unit within the agency*, or — "in the case of an agency that does not have a statistical agency or unit" — *any senior agency official with appropriate expertise*. Eleven agencies house a recognized statistical agency and so get a bureau head with a budget, a staff and in several cases Senate confirmation. Thirteen do not, and get whoever the department names. Part B and Part C are those two populations, and they are not the same job. Part D is the five recognized statistical agencies whose heads are **not** Statistical Officials, which is where the discretion the statute hands over becomes visible. Part E runs the five questions that decide whether the role is worth anything down both branches at once. Companion to [[Federal Statistical System Tree]], which maps the sixteen recognized agencies and units as a structure; this map covers the twenty-four *agencies* that owe an official, which is a different and overlapping set. Also companion to [[How a Federal Survey Is Approved]], the gate these officials advise on but do not control, and to [[Census Bureau Org Chart]], the one agency in Part B whose protections have been tested in this term. > [!note] How to read this chart > **★** = Senate-confirmed · **⏳** = fixed statutory term · **○** = appointed inside the department, no Senate role · **§** = the statute doing the work · **⊘** = a role or duty stated in law with **no authority or remedy attached** · **◎** = the hinge, where the statute stops and department discretion decides · **≠** = OMB's own two published documents disagree here · **◈** = this page's own arithmetic on published counts, not a figure any source reports · **⚑** = a structural point worth stopping on · **[unconfirmed]** = no primary source found; not asserted. > > Names are carried **inside** the fence on this map, unlike most in the series, because the whole question is *who* these people are and what their day jobs are — a map of the role with the seats stripped out would answer nothing. Every name is from the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy's published roster, read **23 October 2026**; titles are from each agency's own page where one was found. Seats in this system have turned over hard since 2025, so treat the roster as a time-slice and not a directory. ``` STATISTICAL OFFICIALS CROSSWALK — 24 AGENCIES, ONE TITLE, TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT JOBS │ Legend: ★ Senate-confirmed ⏳ fixed statutory term ○ appointed inside the department │ § statute ⊘ stated in law, no authority attached ◎ statute stops, discretion starts │ ≠ OMB's own documents disagree ◈ this page's arithmetic ⚑ structural point │ Time-slice: roster read 23 Oct 2026 · statute as in force Oct 2026 │ ■ PART A — WHAT THE STATUTE ACTUALLY SAYS │ ├─◆ § ................ 5 U.S.C. § 314, "Statistical expertise" │ │ Added by Evidence Act § 101(a)(2), P.L. 115-435 (2019). │ │ who owes one .. "each agency" = the 24 agencies listed at 31 U.S.C. § 901(b), │ │ by way of the definition at 5 U.S.C. § 311(1). │ │ ⚑ THE DUTY ATTACHES TO A HARD-CODED LIST OF AGENCIES, NOT TO AGENCIES │ │ THAT STILL EXIST. See USAID in Part C. │ │ │ ├─ THE ONE MANDATORY VERB IN THE SECTION: │ │ "The head of each agency SHALL DESIGNATE ..." │ │ — and designation is the entire obligation. Nothing follows from it. │ │ │ ├─ THE FORK, VERBATIM, WHICH IS WHY PARTS B AND C ARE DIFFERENT JOBS: ◎ │ │ "... the head of any statistical agency or unit within the agency, │ │ or in the case of an agency that does not have a statistical agency │ │ or unit, any senior agency official with appropriate expertise ..." │ │ │ └─ WHAT THE OFFICIAL MAY THEN DO: │ "... as a statistical official to advise on statistical policy, │ techniques, and procedures. Agency officials engaged in statistical │ activities MAY CONSULT with any such statistical official │ AS NECESSARY." │ ⊘ ADVISE IS THE WHOLE POWER. The consulting duty is permissive, it is │ owed BY other officials rather than TO anyone, and "as necessary" is │ judged by the official deciding whether to consult. │ ⊘ NO TERM. NO FOR-CAUSE REMOVAL CLAUSE. NO REPORTING LINE. NO BUDGET │ LINE. NO APPEAL IF OVERRULED. NO CONSEQUENCE IF NEVER CONSULTED. │ ├─◆ WHERE THE JOB'S ACTUAL CONTENT LIVES — AND IT IS NOT IN THE STATUTE ⚑ │ │ OMB Memorandum M-19-23, 10 July 2019, App. C. It supplies everything │ │ § 314 omits: │ │ ├─ "Agency champion for data quality" │ │ ├─ "Agency champion for confidentiality protection and appropriate │ │ │ data access" │ │ ├─ a seat on the agency's Data Governance Body │ │ ├─ "the standing and authority to perform the functions" and │ │ │ "sufficient independence" │ │ └─ fn. 31: "it is OMB's expectation that THESE ARE FULL-TIME POSITIONS" │ │ ⚑ A MEMORANDUM CAN BE RESCINDED WITHOUT LEGISLATION. Strip M-19-23 and │ │ § 314 still stands, having lost nothing, because the memo is carrying │ │ the entire job description. Compare Statistical Policy Directive No. 1, │ │ which does the same load-bearing work for the agencies themselves. │ │ Designation deadline was 13 July 2019; names public by 2 Aug 2019. │ └─◆ THE HEADLINE NUMBER IS ARITHMETICALLY TRUE AND SUBSTANTIVELY WRONG ◈ OMB and the ICSP both say 24 Statistical Officials. The roster carries 24 labels. But: ├─ USAID's seat reads "Vacant" ................. 1 agency with NONE ├─ HUD carries TWO named officials ............. 1 agency with TWO └─ 23 agencies filled + 1 empty = 24 agencies; 24 labels across 23 filled agencies. The duplicate cancels the vacancy and the published total comes out right. ◈ ■ PART B — THE 11 WHERE THE OFFICIAL RUNS A STATISTICAL AGENCY │ The statute leaves the department NO choice of person here, only a choice │ among units. Each of these is a bureau head first and a Statistical │ Official second, and the first job is what carries the authority. │ ├─ Commerce ....... George Cook ......... Bureau of the Census ★⏳ │ 13 U.S.C. § 21: 5-year term, 60-day removal notice to │ both Houses. The strongest protection in the system — │ and see the Census Bureau Org Chart map for how it has held. ├─ Labor .......... Brett Matsumoto ..... Bureau of Labor Statistics ★ ├─ Justice ........ Kevin Scott ......... Bureau of Justice Statistics ○ │ Lost its Senate-confirmation requirement in 2012. ├─ Education ...... Matthew Soldner ..... Nat'l Center for Education Statistics ○ ├─ HHS ............ Carolyn Greene ...... Nat'l Center for Health Statistics ○ ├─ Agriculture .... Joe Parsons ......... Nat'l Agricultural Statistics Service ○ ├─ Transportation . Ed Strocko .......... Bureau of Transportation Statistics ○ │ Appointed by statute INTO THE COMPETITIVE SERVICE. ├─ Treasury ....... Mark Xu ............. Statistics of Income Division ○ ├─ NSF ............ Emilda Rivers ....... Nat'l Center for Science and │ Engineering Statistics ○ ├─ Energy ......... Tristan Abbey ....... Energy Information Administration ★≠ │ Sworn in 25 Sep 2025 as EIA's 11th Administrator — │ so he IS a unit head, but the ICSP roster labels him │ a Statistical Official only, not both. ≠ └─ SSA ............ Gayle Reznik ........ Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics [unconfirmed] Also labelled Statistical Official only. Whether she heads ORES could not be confirmed from SSA's own page and is NOT asserted here. ≠ ⚑ ≠ THE ROSTER AND THE RULE DISAGREE BY TWO. OMB's own 2024 final rule states that at 11 agencies the unit head serves as the Statistical Official. The public roster's labels show only 9 marked as both. Abbey and Reznik are the gap. Abbey's unit headship is verifiable from EIA; Reznik's is not verifiable from SSA. So one half of OMB's arithmetic can be reconstructed from primary sources and the other half cannot. ■ PART C — THE 13 WHERE THE OFFICIAL IS WHOEVER THE DEPARTMENT NAMED │ No recognized statistical agency in the house, so § 314's second branch │ applies and the department picks "any senior agency official with │ appropriate expertise." Nothing defines senior, appropriate, or expertise. ◎ │ ├─ State .................. Margaret Callahan ├─ Interior ............... Kawa Ng ├─ Homeland Security ...... Thomas Woermer ├─ Veterans Affairs ....... Eddie Thomas ├─ EPA .................... Alex Marten ├─ NASA ................... Chris Andall ├─ GSA .................... Todd Coleman ├─ OPM .................... Lance Harris ├─ SBA .................... Travis Dorsey ├─ NRC .................... Shaun Anderson ├─ Defense ................ Cameron Stanley │ Carried on the roster as "Department of War." │ EO 14347 (10 Sep 2025) made that a SECONDARY │ name; the renaming passed the House and cleared │ Senate committee in 2026. Whether 31 U.S.C. │ § 901(b)(1) — the list that decides who owes an │ official at all — has been amended could not be │ confirmed. [unconfirmed] ├─ HUD .................... George R. Carter III AND Lydia B. Taghavi ⚑ │ Two people, one statutory slot that reads "any │ senior agency official" in the singular. Per │ HUD's own PD&R organization chart of 9 Apr 2026, │ Carter directs the Housing and Demographic │ Analysis Division and Taghavi the Open Data │ Division — DIVISION DIRECTORS, several layers │ below the Secretary, not officers of the │ department. Nothing in § 314 forbids this, │ because § 314 forbids nothing. └─ USAID .................. "Vacant" ⊘⚑ USAID shut down 1 Jul 2025 and its surviving functions moved to State. The agency is still on the 31 U.S.C. § 901(b) list, so the duty to designate still formally attaches — to an agency with no staff to designate from. The seat cannot be filled and cannot be removed. A duty with no one to owe it and no one to enforce it. ⚑ OMB EXPECTED THESE TO BE FULL-TIME JOBS (M-19-23 fn. 31). In this branch the role is a second hat by construction: the department is told to find someone senior who already works there, not to create a post. Where the day jobs could be checked they were division-level, not department-level. The other eleven were NOT independently verified and are not characterised. ■ PART D — THE 5 RECOGNIZED UNITS WHOSE HEADS ARE *NOT* STATISTICAL OFFICIALS │ 16 recognized agencies and units; 11 of their heads are Statistical │ Officials; 5 are not. This is where Part A's fork does its real work — │ "the head of ANY statistical agency or unit" lets a department with │ several units choose one and leave the others out. ◎ │ ├─ Bureau of Economic Analysis ........... Vipin Arora ....... Commerce │ Commerce chose Census. ├─ Economic Research Service ............. Kelly Maguire ..... Agriculture ├─ Nat'l Animal Health Monitoring System . Andrea Beam ....... Agriculture │ Agriculture chose NASS over both. ├─ Center for Behavioral Health │ Statistics and Quality ................ Christopher Jones . HHS │ HHS chose NCHS. └─ Microeconomic Surveys Unit ............ Alice Volz ........ Federal Reserve STRUCTURALLY INELIGIBLE: the Board of Governors is not a 31 U.S.C. § 901(b) agency, so it owes no Statistical Official and its unit head can never be one. ⚑ ⚑ FOUR OF THE FIVE LOST A DEPARTMENTAL COIN-FLIP THEY HAD NO SAY IN, and the fifth was never in the running. A unit head's standing in the data governance of their own department therefore depends on a choice their department made once, in 2019, under a statute that gave it no criteria. ■ PART E — THE FIVE QUESTIONS, RUN DOWN BOTH BRANCHES AT ONCE │ │ │ PART B — unit head │ PART C — second hat │ ────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────── │ Authority as Statistical │ advise │ advise │ Official (§ 314) │ ⊘ │ ⊘ │ ────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────── │ Authority they actually │ runs a bureau: staff, │ whatever their day job │ have │ budget, publication │ carries. At HUD, a │ │ release │ division. │ ────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────── │ Fixed term │ 1 of 11 (Census) │ none │ │ ⏳ │ │ ────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────── │ Senate confirmation │ 3 of 11 ★ │ none ★ │ │ (Census, BLS, EIA) │ — not as officials; │ │ │ any confirmation is │ │ │ to the day job. │ ────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────── │ What happens when it's │ the bureau still has │ nothing is left. The │ vacant │ a deputy, a statute │ designation was the │ │ and a product │ only thing there. │ │ │ See USAID. ⊘ │ └─◆ THE SHAPE ⚑ In Part B the title is the smallest thing the person holds. In Part C it is frequently the only thing. Both are "the Statistical Official" in the same sentence of the same statute, counted in the same total of 24, and seated on the same Interagency Council on Statistical Policy — whose chair, the Chief Statistician of the United States, is himself not Senate-confirmed. So the protection a federal statistic enjoys at a given agency is not set by § 314 at all. It is set by whether that agency happened to already have a bureau when the Evidence Act passed. ``` ## Notes - **The role's working job description is not in the statute.** [[OMB Memorandum M-19-23]] supplies the champion-for-data-quality and champion-for-confidentiality framing, the Data Governance Body seat, the "standing and authority" and "sufficient independence" language, and the full-time expectation. None of it appears in 5 U.S.C. § 314, and a memorandum does not need legislation to withdraw. - **The statutory text is the finding.** 5 U.S.C. § 314 is reproduced in Part A in full rather than summarized, because every characterization of the role's weakness on this page is a reading of those two sentences and the reader should be able to check it. The section's only mandatory verb is "designate." - **How current these names are.** The ICSP roster at councils.gov carries no "as of" date. It was read on 23 October 2026 and is treated as a time-slice of that date, not as a current directory. Titles were verified against agency sources for Tristan Abbey (EIA, sworn in 25 September 2025) and for the two HUD officials (PD&R organization chart of 9 April 2026). The other twenty-one names were **not** independently verified beyond the roster, and no day-job title is asserted for them. - **OMB's arithmetic does not reconcile from public documents, and the gap is recorded rather than resolved.** The October 2024 final rule at 5 CFR Part 1321 (89 FR 82453, effective 10 December 2024) states that 11 Statistical Officials are also heads of recognized statistical agencies or units. The published roster's own labels mark 9. The difference is Abbey and Reznik. Abbey's unit headship is verifiable; Gayle Reznik's headship of SSA's Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics is **not** confirmable from SSA's own ORES page, which names no head, and is therefore marked `[unconfirmed]` and not asserted. - **The 23-filled-and-24-counted arithmetic is derived here**, marked ◈. No source reports it. It follows from two things each source does state: that USAID's seat is vacant, and that HUD has two named officials. - **USAID is on the list because the list is in a different statute.** 5 U.S.C. § 311(1) defines "agency" for this purpose by reference to 31 U.S.C. § 901(b), which enumerates agencies by name. Removing an agency from that list takes an act of Congress, so the designation duty survives the agency. Whether § 901(b) has been amended since USAID's 1 July 2025 shutdown was not established. - **"Department of War" on the roster is not the department's statutory name.** Executive Order 14347, published 10 September 2025, designated it as a *secondary* name. A statutory renaming passed the House and cleared Senate committee during 2026; whether it has been enacted, and whether 31 U.S.C. § 901(b)(1) now reads "Department of War," is marked `[unconfirmed]` here. This matters only because § 901(b) is the list that decides which agencies owe an official at all. - **What was deliberately not asserted:** no day-job title for the eleven Part C officials not checked; no claim that any particular official has been ignored or overruled, which the statute makes unobservable by design; no headcount or budget for any Statistical Official's office; no claim about whether M-19-23 remains in force unamended beyond its own text. - **Questions left open.** Whether any agency has ever recorded a Statistical Official's advice being overruled. Whether the HUD double-designation is unique or merely the only one visible on the roster. What the eleven unchecked Part C officials do for a living. Whether 31 U.S.C. § 901(b) has been amended for either USAID or the Defense renaming. Whether an agency has ever been found non-compliant with § 314, and by whom. - **Symbol note.** `≠` is new to the series and marks a point where two of OMB's own published documents disagree; it is used three times and each use is load-bearing. `⊘`, `◎`, `◈` and `⚑` carry their established meanings from earlier maps in this series. ## See also - [[Federal Statistical System Tree]] - [[How a Federal Survey Is Approved]] - [[Census Bureau Org Chart]] - [[Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act]] - [[Statistical Policy Directive No. 1]] - [[Interagency Council on Statistical Policy]] - [[Chief Statistician of the United States]] - [[Office of Management and Budget]] - [[Paperwork Reduction Act]] - [[The Politics of Official Statistics]] - [[BLS Data Integrity Crisis]] - [[Census Undercount]] - [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]] - [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] - [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] - [[Federal Agencies Hub]]