Expert Technical Statistical Services

DESCRIPTION

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance
with the format in Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in
this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation; quotations are being
requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. The solicitation is issued as an
invitation request for quotation (RFQ).

NOTICE OF INTENT

The Government intends on soliciting from Dr. Fritz Scheuren, pursuant to FAR 13.106-1(b) because Dr. Fritz Scheuren is the only one source that is reasonably available to satisfy agency requirements. The anticipated period of performance will be from 18 months from date of award.

The reasoning behind the determination is Dr. Fritz Scheuren is a his extensive background experience with data matching, imputation, and evaluating findings from exact and statistical matching making him uniquely qualified to provide expert advice to this effort.

He co-lead the first successful matching study while the Chief Mathematical Statistician at the Social Security Administration in the 1970s and also participated in seminal work on the handling of missing data, including a role in the creation of "Multiple Imputation". His research on these issues has continued since them. Dr. Scheuren has also conducted research focused on improving the CPS imputation system since the 1970s starting with his landmark 11 volume CPS publication series Studies from Interagency Data Linkages, done while he was at the Social Security Administration.

He has published extensively on the effects of imputation since that time. For example, Dr Scheuren has conducted extensive research on the implications of the CPS hot deck approach for income distribution analysis, including the analysis of poverty as well as developing alternative imputation procedures. He has continued to develop approximate "workarounds" that would allow for sound inferential uses of the CPS income and poverty (P-60) statistical series. These workarounds include his 1979-1980 work on how to calculate frequentist-based imputation variances which was updated in Scheuren's 2005 American Statistician paper, Multiple Imputation: How It Began and Continues. In that 2005 paper Scheuren summarizes much of his earlier work and includes many of the main references.

Dr. Scheuren, when at the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), worked with Israel Putnam and Mollie Orshansky to develop the poverty tabulations, at that time called OEO tables that led directly to the annual Official Poverty Thresholds statistical series prepared by the Census Bureau using the CPS. He featured this work internationally in a paper he delivered in Brussels during February of 2009, entitled Challenges of Change: US Statistical Observations. Among other concerns, in that paper he called attention to the possible sensitivity of poverty rate estimates and the characteristics of the poor to the dramatic growth in imputation. The CPS continues to be used today, as the survey of record for US poverty estimates and for understanding characteristics of the poverty population.

Dr Fritz Scheuren is a world-renowned statistician and is a widely recognized authority on data matching, the effects of imputation to correct for missing data on the Current Population Survey (CPS) and on other national surveys as well as an authority on poverty measurement. He has provided consulting advice to this on-going joint effort by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Census Bureau since its inception and is thoroughly familiar with this project. In addition, he has been at Census part time as an IPA working to improve the matching methodology underlying the data used in this project. Dr Scheuren has the Census Title 13 and IRS clearances that are required in order to utilize this data set developed by the Census Bureau. Dr. Scheuren, a former President of the American Statistical Association, has received many honors for his contributions to statistical knowledge and excellence

Copy of the statment of work can be obtained by request via e-mail to bryan.daines@psc.hhs.gov