IRIS is sending out new spending reports for member universities based on the October 2018 data submission. These reports mark the first report release in the IRIS Member Portal since the recent redesign. The Development Team at IRIS has been busy this year adding new features and updating the Portal to a fresh, more user-friendly interface. We hope you find it easier to navigate and welcome any feedback you’d like to share. Please note that universities who have not submitted a complete set of data files will not yet be able to view this report. If you have any questions about your latest report please contact us at IRIS-contact@umich.edu.
What’s new for this data tranche?
The IRIS Tech Team works diligently to clean, refine, and enhance the data in the reports you see, and this tranche contains a number of such improvements, most importantly:
- The accuracy and consistency of occupational classifications has been improved by an enhanced classification process to reduce the possibility of fluctuation in occupation counts.
- New resources for mapping CFDA codes to federal agencies have been developed, improving the comprehensiveness of employee-agency mapping; the full mapping is now available to you.
- Spending information that cannot be geocoded is no longer included in the calculation of the in-state spending displayed in the “Benchmarking” tab of the Spending Report.
- Enhancements to mapping spending to congressional districts have been implemented, resulting in greater accuracy.
- In the previous report you received, spending was pegged to 2015. To account for inflation, this data tranche is pegged to 2018.
What’s next?
More reports are on the way! Depending on timetables at the Census Bureau, we anticipate sending the Employee Profile Report and the Vendor Profile Report for the October 2018 data tranche around around March 2019.