Director's Page

To BEA's customers:

BEA strives to provide the most timely, relevant and accurate economic data to you, our users, to help promote a better understanding of the U.S. economy. These reliable and consistent measures of economic activity are essential to the informed decisionmaking of policymakers, business leaders and every American household. The success of our statistical programs, in large part, is determined by your trust in the quality of our data. As one of the world's leading statistical agencies, we are dedicated to staying on the cutting edge of the economy.

To help keep you informed on a number of non-statistical issues, this page provides a number of useful pieces of information. The 5-year BEA Strategic Plan is available below for your review as well as a report card of our successes in meeting the over 200 annual milestones in the Plan. Information on the President's current budget request for BEA also is available. Congressional testimony related to BEA and its statistical programs will be included below to keep you current on important topics being considered by Congress. Finally, other important reports and information can be found here to keep you informed on ongoing activities and plans at BEA.

If you have any questions or issues about BEA that you would like to share, I encourage you to contact me or any member of the BEA staff. We welcome your comments and suggestions. When you talk, we listen.

J. Steven Landefeld, Director
Bureau of Economic Analysis

Strategic Plan

Strategic Plan for FY2008-FY2012 (PDF • 693KB)
Strategic Plan Report Card FY2007 (PDF • 342KB)
Strategic Plan for FY2007–FY2011 (PDF • 780KB)

Budget

BEA FY 2009 Budget Justification (PDF)

Presentations

"Official Statistics and the Age of Turbulence" (PDF • 121 KB)
Presented at the World Congress Conference on National Accounts | May 2008
"Update on BEA Activities" (PDF • 152 KB)
Presented before the BEA Advisory Committee | May 2008
"The Impact of Multi-National Companies on Balance of Payments and National Accounts" (PDF • 185 KB)
Presented before the United Nations Working Group on National Accounts | April 2008
"Measuring Innovation’s Role in GDP & Productivity Growth" (PDF • 170 KB)
Presented at the Swedish Embassy | February 2008
"National Time Accounting and National Economic Accounting" (PDF • 560 KB)
Presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research on National Time accounting and Subjective Well Being | December 2007
- Related paper and upcoming volume of the conference
"Update on BEA Activities" (PDF • 152 KB)
Presented before the BEA Advisory Committee | November 2007

Further Information

"Taking the Pulse of the Economy: Measuring GDP," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2008 (PDF • 124KB)
FY 2007 Report on Customer Satisfaction, January 2008 (PDF • 710KB)
Importance of Data Sharing to BEA, October 2005 (PDF • 149KB)
Architecture for the National Accounts - NBER/CRIW conference with papers discussing BEA's accounts, April 2004
Information Quality Guidelines, October 1, 2002 (PDF • 281KB)
Congressional testimony
"GDP: One of the Greatest Inventions of the 20th Century," January 2000 (PDF • 147KB)