first blog for everything

Well, the word is out to all: I quit my current job yesterday and I'm returning to the federal service at the Census Bureau in early November. My boss sent an email to staff and I sent one to my colleagues and friends outside my current organization, a trade association focused on promoting rental housing.

I didn't think I was ever going to work for Census again. I remember that late August 2003 day, leaving Census several hours before my work day was supposed to end, a huge grin on my face. I had brought beers to work to celebrate the occasion -- and my future boss, then acting branch chief (my regular boss was on vacation) -- refused to imbibe with me to celebrate my departure. "It's against federal regulation to have alcohol on campus." So I won't say definitively whether I went to the office next door to share my beers with another colleague. I did go to the office of my boss's boss to say goodbye to him, and ended up giving him an earful, not that alcohol had anything to do with it. When my boss returned, he seemed quite surprised that his boss was on his case about the survey that had been falling to pieces for about a year before I left.

But that incident was history until now...surely not on the mind of my future employer when he called me this past May to ask me if I'd like to return. One thing led to another, and I'm starting at Census in a few weeks.

I have two loves: piano and data. Whatever I write here, I do love the Census Bureau and I have a fondness for the many great people who work there, even as I'm starting this blog knowing I will need an outlet for the shenanigans I am sure to see there.

While it's on my mind, let me compile a wishlist for what I'd like to see happen while I'm at census:

• The survey I will work on will have comprehensible, effective questionnaires and will provide quality data to the various stakeholders
• Census will better organize the way it distributes population data.
• Census will investigate and make progress on its use of administrative records in helping to collect and verify data for various censuses and surveys.
• Census will make efforts to streamline and integrate the various surveys so as to improve data quality and to reduce respondent burden.
• Census will develop an effective, documented, transparent, comprehensible model for creating and updating its master address file.
• Census will integrate its processing of demographic data.
• Every overweight census employee (including this one) will lose at least ten pounds and will wear reasonable and appropriate business casual attire.
• The Middle East will experience peace.

I think that's enough dreaming for one evening.