The Insights Association, the leading nonprofit organization representing the market research and analytics industry, issued a statement welcoming the U.S. Senate confirmation of Russ Vought to be director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The Senate voted 53 to 47 to confirm Vought on February 6, 2025.
“The insights industry looks forward to working with Russ Vought on competitive sourcing issues, census funding, and federal statistical policy now that he has been confirmed again as OMB Director,” said Howard Fienberg, Senior VP Advocacy at the Insights Association.
“Vought’s leadership on competitive sourcing can help reduce the aggressive federal government competition with the private sector, such as in the Census Household Panel, and create more opportunities for private sector jobs and contracts in the insights industry while bringing greater cost efficiency and effectiveness to the government’s activities,” commented Fienberg. “This will align well with legislation we support: the Freedom from Government Competition Act.”
“We will be working with Director Vought and his staff to bolster the resources for the U.S. Census Bureau’s core Constitutional activities – the American Community Survey (ACS) and the decennial Census – which ensure that the insights industry can properly represent the American population in research and decision making in both the public and private sectors,” Fienberg continued. “As we pass the midpoint of the decade, the time to ramp up funding for the 2030 Census is now, with the census field tests already looming next year. Chronic funding interruptions in the last decade forced the Bureau to cancel most of its field tests, including in rural areas and tribal reservations, leading to dramatic cost uncertainty when it came time to roll out the full headcount of our population.”
“Finally, we see multiple opportunities to work with Director Vought and his team at OMB on federal statistical policy,” Fienberg said. “In the short term, the director can help bring order and clarity to the fluctuation of websites and data available from the Census Bureau, with many data sets having been hard to locate or simply unavailable this past week. That will prove particularly important in making sure that other Trump Administration policies do not impede public access to essential ACS and census data necessary for producing representative statistical samples for all research studies across the U.S., including data on race and ethnicity. Over the long term, Director Vought can help the chief statistician’s office at OMB to modernize federal statistical policy and save taxpayer dollars, by fixing current policies that discourage online research (which is currently how most research in the world is conducted) and make it challenging to incentivize response from research subjects.”
Based in Washington, DC, Howard is the Insights Association's lobbyist for the marketing research and data analytics industry, focusing primarily on consumer privacy and data security, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), tort reform, and the funding and integrity of the decennial Census and the American Community Survey (ACS).
Howard has more than two decades of public policy experience. Before the Insights Association, he worked in Congress as senior legislative staffer for then-Representatives Christopher Cox (CA-48) and Cliff Stearns (FL-06). He also served more than four years with a science policy think tank, working to improve the understanding of scientific and social research and methodology among journalists and policymakers.
Howard is also co-director of The Census Project, a 900+ member coalition in support of a fair and accurate Census and ACS.
He has also served previously on the Board of Directors for the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics and and the Association of Government Relations Professionals.
Howard has an MA International Relations from the University of Essex in England and a BA Honors Political Studies from Trent University in Canada, and has obtained the Certified Association Executive (CAE), Professional Lobbying Certificate (PLC) and the Public Policy Certificate (PPC).
When not running advocacy for the Insights Association, Howard enjoys hockey, NFL football, sci-fi and horror movies, playing with his dog, and spending time with family and friends.