{"id":366304,"date":"2022-04-14T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T20:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=366304"},"modified":"2022-04-14T06:00:27","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T20:00:27","slug":"grijalva-delegates-make-bipartisan-gao-request-to-identify-data-collection-gaps-for-us-territories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/grijalva-delegates-make-bipartisan-gao-request-to-identify-data-collection-gaps-for-us-territories\/","title":{"rendered":"Grijalva, delegates make bipartisan GAO request  to identify data collection gaps for US territories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON D.C.<\/strong>\u2014U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee chair Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and the delegates of the five U.S territories\u2014American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands\u2014sent a request last week to the U.S. Government Accountability Office o examine gaps in federal agency data collection for the territories. The request also asks GAO to determine the impact of those gaps on federal funding for the territories and to make policy recommendations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The full letter is available here:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/37aQoz7\">https:\/\/bit.ly\/37aQoz7<\/a><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_366300\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-366300\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ra\u00fal-M.-Grijalva-mug-11-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-366300\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-366300\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grijalva<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the letter, the lawmakers point out that shortcomings in federal agency\u2019s data collection efforts for the U.S. territories have already had long-term impacts. Without reliable population, economic, labor force and agricultural data, the territories have been underfunded and underrepresented in certain federal programs. Complicating data collection efforts further, GAO\u00a0reported last year that natural disasters, which have been especially devastating in the U.S. territories, and the COVID-19 pandemic created additional obstacles for data collection during the 2020 Census.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurrent and complete information is essential to good decision-making. &#8230;Improving the government\u2019s capacity for collection and analysis of data is critical in understanding issues related to the U.S. territories,\u201d the authors write.<\/p>\n<p>The letter was signed by Grijalva, Rep. Gregorio Sablan (Ind-MP), Rep. Michael San Nicolas (D-GU), Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI), Rep. Jenniffer Gonz\u00e1lez-Colon (R-PRo), and Rep. Aumua Amata Radewagen (R-AS). <strong>(PR)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON D.C.\u2014U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee chair Ra\u00fal M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":366301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11016,320],"class_list":["post-366304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-gao","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}