Strategic Planning for the American Statistical Association, 1984–1987

Abstract

At the December 1984 meeting of the ASA Board of Directors, the board authorized a long-range strategic planning effort by the ASA and approved a budget line item to support the activity. Incoming President John Neter asked incoming President-Elect Donald Marquardt to lead the strategic planning effort. The strategic plan will influence the course of ASA and the statistics profession for some years to come. In view of the potential for a wide impact, the planning process was organized to involve many people from a wide variety of constituencies in ASA. The participation of many ASA constituent organizations and members enriched the resulting plans. Such a process necessarily took much effort and time, but many of the most important future benefits derive directly from the discussions and the insights developed by the ASA members involved during the planning process. In preparing this report we represent the consensus of many people and, in particular, of the Board of Directors. Consensus does not necessarily mean unanimity. One of the strengths of ASA is the diversity of its members and their interests, complementing their unity of purpose in the field of statistics. A Strategic Planning Group carried out many activities, beginning in March 1985, and set the stage for a meeting of the combined 1985 and 1986 Boards of Directors at Gaithersburg, Maryland, on November 1-3, 1985. At that meeting, strategic issues and strategic goals were defined. After that meeting, three task forces worked on strategic issues and presented their reports to the Board of Directors in August 1986. (A summary of strategic planning activities is included in App. A.) Using the results from the task forces and comments from the board, the chairs of the three task forces, with John Neter and Don Marquardt, prepared this integrated document. At the same time the former Future Goals Committee was restructured as the Planning Committee, with the presidentelect serving as chair, to deal with tactical year-to-year planning of ASA program priorities. The Planning Committee does not do long-term planning, though it does have responsibility for preparing updates to the ASA strategic plan and determining when a new plan is needed. Though most organizations, including ASA, do fairly well at shortterm planning, frequently there is little emphasis on longrange strategic planning. Section 2 describes the foundation of the strategic plan. This material was initially developed at the Gaithersburg conference and has subsequently been refined. Section 3 includes a statement of the future directions of ASA, in light of the 14 goals set by the Board of Directors at its April 1986 meeting. Section 4 describes needed modifications in the structure and functions of the organization, including the roles of sections, committees, chapters, publications, meetings, membership, the Board of Directors, and the central office. There is a section on the interactions of ASA with other organizations. Finally, there is a section on the transition to a new organization.