Bill to make demographic data more consistent, available making its way through Maine Legislature

“Having wider access to the data, I think, is just a good thing in general,” said James Myall, a policy analyst for Maine Center for Economic Policy, in an interview.

Myall said many people like himself who analyze data on a daily basis are limited to widely available federal information, such as data put out by the Census Bureau, which does not always tell the full story because it’s based on large surveys.

“That means for smaller populations in a state like Maine, it can be hard to find data that’s accurate. Especially for the smaller sub populations, there’s a lot of potential error in there that can draw a decent size margin of error,” Myall said. “So in some cases, having better access to state administrative data would help to solve that.”

Click here to read the full story, March 13, 2022, in The Maine Monitor.