EconomicIndicators.Gov to stay online

....wow. Who'd have thought they'd change their mind so quickly??


After Complaints, Econ Data Portal to Stay Open

The U.S. Department of Commerce appears to have turned away from its plans to yank the plug on Economicindicators.gov, a Web portal describing its mission as providing “timely access to the daily releases of key economic indicators from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau.”

News of the impending closure of the site had been making the rounds since last week. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) complained publicly about it. And earlier today, a note at the top of the site said “due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008.” But after 1 p.m. EST a different, rather lengthy, announcement graced the top of the Web page. It begins: “The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) has decided to continue the economicindicators.gov website … ESA initially planned to discontinue the service due to cost concerns but given the feedback ESA received, the decision has been made to continue the site and improve its functionality.” A commerce department spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Economicindicators.gov mainly acts as a one-stop shop for those looking for the latest turn of the screw on some of the economic statistics scattered on other, less-than-user-friendly Web sites maintained by the Feds. But the site has been included in Forbes.com’s “Best of the Web” directory, which says it “simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself — say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site — is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.”

Others, however, disagree. Maurine Haver of economic data company Haver Analytics writes in an email that she thinks “closing this site makes sense given the current budget situation. It duplicates content found on the BEA and Census Web sites without offering coverage of the full set of key economic indicators. For example, it does not cover employment, productivity and prices.” –Matt Phillips

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