The Official Google Blog reports that they've released a new search tool -- one that accesses public information and builds on their acquisition of Trendalyzer.

Here's how it works:

1. Go to Google.com.
   
2. Type in [unemployment rate] or [population], followed by a U.S. state or county. (Just type in the county name -- "unemployment rate duval" worked for me, while "unemployment rate duval county florida" gave me other links but not the publicdata information.)
   
3. The most recent estimates will appear. Click on the publicdata link, and you'll get an interactive table.

The table gave me monthly unemployment rates from 1990 to March 2009 for Duval County, Florida. It then had a list of states and counties and I could click on any one of them and get instant comparative data charted alongside my original county on the graph. Very cool.

Google says,

"The data we're including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. All the data we've used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. They did the hard work! We just made the data a bit easier to find and use.

Since Google's acquisition of Trendalyzer two years ago, we have been working on creating a new service that make lots of data instantly available for intuitive, visual exploration. Today's launch is a first step in that direction. We hope people will find this search feature helpful, whether it's used in the classroom, the boardroom or around the kitchen table. We also hope that this will pave the way for public data to take a more central role in informed public conversations.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more."

You can read more about the new tool in this Washington Post article. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.

This journal is available in its entirety free for a limited time. There's some articles in it that should be of interest to the community indicators practitioner; take a look at the piece on data challenges in developing child well-being indicators and the article called "Beyond GPA."

Here's more details about how to get access to the material in the journal:

Dear Researcher,

We are delighted to offer you FREE access to the entire issue of Child Indicators Research until May 20, 2009. Take advantage of this time-limited offer - bookmark the site, visit it throughout this period and pass the link to your colleagues.

Table of Contents:
Read, download and save these articles online as if you were a subscriber:

• Editorial
  Asher Ben-Arieh
• Creating a Longitudinal Indicator: an Exploratory Analysis of Turbulence
  Kristin Anderson Moore, Sharon Vandivere, Akemi Kinukawa & Thomson Ling
• From Rhetoric to Reality: Challenges in Using Data to Report on a National Set of Child Well-being Indicators Sinad Hanafin and Anne-Marie Brooks
• When Children are Asked About Their Well-being: Towards a Framework for Guiding Policy
  Toby Fattore, Jan Mason & Elizabeth Watson
• The Preliminary Development of the Children's Overall Satisfaction with Schooling Scale (COSSS)
  Justus J. Randolph, Marjaana Kangas & Heli Ruokamo
• Beyond GPA: Toward More Comprehensive Assessments of Students' School Experiences
  Keith J. Zullig, Thomas M. Koopman & E. Scott Huebner

From the Corporation for Enterprise Development:

CFED, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, seeks to fill the newly created position of Vice President for Policy & Research. Our successful incumbent will develop, articulate and champion a robust research and policy agenda predicated on a vision of expanding the economic opportunities available to all Americans.

CFED is a leading organization in asset building and economic development, collaborating with diverse partners at the national, state and local level. Current flagship initiatives and programs include our unprecedented Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, a state-by-state analysis of the impact of public policies on individual asset-accumulation; SEED, the national, multi-year children's development account demonstration; I'M HOME, our multi-faceted initiative to build high-quality manufactured homes and create public policies and financing options that support them as an avenue asset-building; and SETI, an innovative exploration of the use of the tax code to scale-up delivery of financial services and business literacy to millions of micro- and small business enterprises. We're deeply engaged in an array of advocacy activities, including universal children's savings accounts, expansion of the Saver's Credit, IDA tax credits and Auto IRA.

The Vice President for Policy and Research will provide vision, direction and a cohesive framework for advancing CFED's evidence-based advocacy strategy, embracing the full spectrum of asset-building and economic development strategies and bringing to fruition a wide array of emerging opportunities at the local, state and federal levels. The Vice President leads a team of 10 professionals and will serve as a member of our executive team, helping to shape our long-term agenda and drive forward CFED's strategic goals. The incumbent will be based in our Washington D.C. office and will report to CFED's President.

For more information and to apply, click here.

Here's a question and an update from the American Community Survey I thought you might want to respond to: 

Request for Input and Feedback on Advanced Query (AQ) System for ACS Data

The Census Bureau seeks your input and feedback on whether it would be useful to have an Advanced Query (AQ) system for the tabulation of data from the ACS and the Census 2010 short form.

As part of Census 2000 data dissemination, the Census Bureau developed an AQ system that allowed for no-cost, user-specified tabulations from the full microdata file for a limited number of users (because of its experimental nature, the AQ system had restricted access.) It included safeguards against disclosure of identifying information about individuals and housing units.

The AQ system was discontinued in November 2008 due to concerns with emerging IT security risk trends, information on newly discovered vulnerabilities in the legacy AQ system, and the obsolescence of the hardware.  Since then, the Census Bureau has been discussing the possibility of developing a new AQ system for the tabulation of ACS and 2010 Census data.

If you think you would be able to make productive use of such a system, please respond to michelle.e.jiles by May 1, 2009, with examples of the kinds of analyses you would perform with those data. 

If you have questions or comments about the American Community Survey, please call (800) 923-8282 or e-mail cmo.acs.

The KIDS COUNT Data Center has been redesigned and is now available for use. This replaces the former CLIKS database, and has been in the works for a little while -- we told you earlier this was coming (and had a sneak peek at the NAPC Conference in March), and now it's here!

From the site:

• The Data Center now has county-level data 4/17/2009

  Welcome to the NEW KIDS COUNT Data Center, the place to get all the information you are looking for about the kids and families living in your community. Now including the information formerly in the Community-Level Information on Kids (CLIKS) site, the KIDS COUNT Data Center has data for states, cities, counties, and school districts.

• New Education and Demographic Data Available 4/17/2009

  The education and demographic sections in Data Across States have been updated to include the 2007 American Community Survey data. Updated data for states and large cities include:
  • Children in households where the household head is a high school dropout
  • Young adults enrolled in or completed college
  • Grandchildren in the care of grandparents

Go check it out!