Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Investment ID: 012-000001055
Overview
Program Title
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Description
Systems and resources that provide IT services for the CPI Program, which is part of the Prices and Cost of Living programs. Enables the program to efficiently and effectively sample, collect, estimate, and publish the CPI, a Principal Federal Economic Indicator (PFEI), in a secure environment. Facilitates the production of timely, accurate, and relevant information on price statistics.
Type of Program
Major IT Investments
Multi-Agency Category
Not Applicable
Associated Websites
https://www.bls.gov
Investment Detail
The origin of the CPI investment predates the existing SDLCM Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). During FY 2020, the CPI investment began an approved modernization effort in addition to the current operation and maintenance. The most recent analysis using the DOL-CBA tool reflects that the selected alternative will provide the highest ROI of 447.0%. This alternative also presents the least risk, lowest adjusted life cycle costs, and the highest net present value (NPV). This investment uses a collaboration of government FTEs and contract personnel to effectively, efficiently, and continuously operate, maintain, and enhance the CPI System to meet its cost, schedule, and performance goals. All metrics indicate the benefits of the current operation, maintenance and modernization of the CPI investment exceed the costs for achieving the objectives of the CPI. In addition, the selected alternative is the most beneficial to CPI in terms of risk, employee relations, and quality. Risk-wise, the modernization effort will increase stability by replacing legacy technologies impacted by employee turnover and improve our ability to recruit needed technical expertise by updating systems to current IT industry technologies. For FY 2024, the requested funding level for CPI includes the budget proposal to Improve the Timeliness of the Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U) and the proposal to Improve Poverty Measurement.
CPI disseminates monthly data on changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services. The CPI measure is used extensively for economic analysis and policy formulation in both the public and private sectors, including use as a benchmark to escalate contract costs among individuals and organizations. The CPI is the most widely used measure of inflation in the country with 4.2 million unique website page-views in CY 2022. CPI is used as a deflator of other economic series such as retail sales, hourly and weekly earnings, and components of the National Income and Product Accounts including Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The index affects the income of tens of millions of American citizens as a result of statutory action: around 63 million Social Security beneficiaries, approximately 5 million military and Federal Civil Service retirees and survivors, and about 41 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients. The CPI also is used to adjust individual income tax brackets and personal income tax exemptions for changes due to inflation. This investment provides critical ROI to the agency as there are no alternative means for the CPI program to provide critical outputs needed by these stakeholders that result in billions of dollars being adjusted annually.
The CPI investment benefits the CPI program by effectively and efficiently operating, maintaining, and modernizing its system using well supported software in a secure environment, ensuring a 99.5% application availability to support program operations towards completion of planned monthly releases on time. The CPI investment strives to help the CPI program achieve strategic and business results and high customer satisfaction by ensuring missed publication dates or corrections to previous public releases announced in an errata on the BLS public website are not the direct result of IT processing or system errors.
CPI disseminates monthly data on changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services. The CPI measure is used extensively for economic analysis and policy formulation in both the public and private sectors, including use as a benchmark to escalate contract costs among individuals and organizations. The CPI is the most widely used measure of inflation in the country with 4.2 million unique website page-views in CY 2022. CPI is used as a deflator of other economic series such as retail sales, hourly and weekly earnings, and components of the National Income and Product Accounts including Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The index affects the income of tens of millions of American citizens as a result of statutory action: around 63 million Social Security beneficiaries, approximately 5 million military and Federal Civil Service retirees and survivors, and about 41 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients. The CPI also is used to adjust individual income tax brackets and personal income tax exemptions for changes due to inflation. This investment provides critical ROI to the agency as there are no alternative means for the CPI program to provide critical outputs needed by these stakeholders that result in billions of dollars being adjusted annually.
The CPI investment benefits the CPI program by effectively and efficiently operating, maintaining, and modernizing its system using well supported software in a secure environment, ensuring a 99.5% application availability to support program operations towards completion of planned monthly releases on time. The CPI investment strives to help the CPI program achieve strategic and business results and high customer satisfaction by ensuring missed publication dates or corrections to previous public releases announced in an errata on the BLS public website are not the direct result of IT processing or system errors.