In April 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released updated government-wide standards for federal race and ethnicity data collection. These updates added additional categories to help desegregate ethnicities that were once grouped together.
These changes will require all federal agencies to update their data collection standards which will open to new data insights for various ethnic communities.
Why does adding additional ethnic categories matter?
The short answer is all ethnic communities are different. For many ethnic communities in Las Vegas, federal data collections have historically combined several Asian American and Pacific Islander communities into one group.
When federal agencies are looking for ways to support the communities of Las Vegas, especially funding programs to support underserved communities, the data for Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islancer (AANHPI) communities in Las Vegas becomes difficult to segregate. Combining ethnic communities together hides the disparities one group may be facing.
This means little to no representation of specific AANHPI communities in Las Vegas who need the most help. With the new federal guidelines, this is the first step in the future to uncover which AANHPI communities are in need of federal funding.
What happens next?
While the benefits aren’t immediate, this lays a step forward with all federal agencies to desegregate future data collection of various communities. This is a step forward to seeing more data collection reports outlining specific communities that have previously been housed as “Asian”.
View the full press release by OCA National here.
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