Inside Commerce efforts to break data siloes and improve integrity
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ByChristian Robles,
Technology Reporter, Nextgov/FCW
September 17, 2026 04:28 PM ET
An agency official also encouraged public comment on a proposed overhaul of the census that would eliminate race questions and change who is counted as living in the U.S.
The Commerce Department is building a “stronger database” of administrative records from agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Affairs Department, Health and Human Services Department and Social Security Administration, according to Joyce Meyer, undersecretary of Commerce for economic affairs.
“This will allow us to rely more on existing federal agency data and rely less on collecting data,” Meyer said at the Data Foundation’s govDATAx conference Tuesday. “It also allows us to reduce the burden on taxpayers to respond to these lengthy surveys.”
One such combined setup, the Annual Integrated Economic Survey, or AIES, brought seven annual business surveys into...
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