Six Steps to Improve Federal Government Performance on Data Disaggregation

In March 2024, the federal government made significant changes to improve data collection on race and ethnicity that affect all federal agencies. One critical pillar of this announcement is making detailed reporting categories, such as Vietnamese, Samoan, Lebanese, and Mexican the default expectation for all federal data collections.

The rationale provided by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in making these changes is to ensure more accurate and useful race and ethnicity data across the federal government and to better reflect the diversity of our nation. We refer to this component of the SPD 15 announcement as the “data disaggregation pillar,” a decades-long priority for many racial groups including for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. 

In April 2024, AAPI Data and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), in consultation with the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), published a policy report focused on the timely and successful implementation of the data disaggregation pillar. The report addressed observed gaps in the SPD 15 announcement, immediate short-term recommendations that should be adopted, and a series of key data principles for effective SPD 15 implementation.