From the Research Team

National Standard Sunset

The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), plans over the next several months to sunset the current National Standard for Arts Information Exchange (“the Standard”).

To be clear, the NEA still will require Final Descriptive Report (FDR) data as part of the terms and conditions of Partnership Agreements with state and jurisdictional arts agencies (SAAs) and regional arts organizations (RAOs). In other words, the new policy will have no effect on current federal reporting requirements for Partnership Agreements. The change does mean, however, that the National Standard no longer will undergo a wholesale revision process in tandem with any future changes to federal reporting requirements.

To stay agile and responsive to both internal and external demands for data associated with its Partnership Agreements, the NEA will decouple the process of revising FDR data fields from the time line previously needed for making comprehensive changes to the National Standard.

Instead, whenever the NEA seeks stakeholder input on potential changes to reporting requirements for Partnership Agreements—or on the implementation of such changes—the agency will gather input from SAAs and RAOs. On a case-by-case basis, the changes may prompt NASAA and the NEA to recommend specific edits to data coding rules already in use. Those recommendations will have benefited from SAA/RAO consultation.

Background and Purpose

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an intrepid group of state and regional arts leaders, supported by the NEA, sought to standardize and organize information harvested by the relatively new field of state, regional and federal arts agencies.

The early goals of this data management initiative were modest: to help these agencies maintain standardized mailing lists; gather and “standardize” information about the grants that were awarded and the impacts they were beginning to have nationwide; and develop the capability to produce arts resource directories with information about artists, arts organizations, festivals and exhibitions, and performances. The National Standard has gone through several revisions until the present day. Many of the recommendations for achieving its goals, along with a revisions history, can be found on the National Standard pages on the NASAA website.

The Standard remains the foundational taxonomy for state arts agency grants data collection, contributing to a greater knowledge of the field and its historical trends. The consistency of data collection enabled by the Standard allowed for NASAA, SAAs, RAOs and the NEA to articulate their own value, use their grants reporting data and understand their programming in relation to their peers.

Consequently, aspects of the Standard are still ingrained in the NEA’s reporting requirements. Standardization of data elements needed by SAAs and RAOs to meet those requirements will continue to prove relevant. Now and in the future, Final Descriptive Reports will remain the primary data source for understanding Partnership Agreement related activities and subawardees.

What Happens Now?

For now, we have retained the services of Randy Rosenbaum, former executive director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, to manage a multistep curatorial process. Randy will gather historical information about the Standard and help make it available online. He also will interview knowledgeable parties about the Standard’s influence over the years, and produce a brief report to help guide future data-standardization considerations for arts grant makers.

As we retire the Standard, Randy will review and organize the information he has gathered and write a report. We hope that current and future administrators and information managers will benefit from our four-decades-long experience with this information-gathering tool, and that the Standard will help inform new methods of data collection and storytelling about the impact of grants in the arts.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact Ryan Stubbs or Kelly Liu at NASAA.