Barry Johnson, 2025 Davie-Davis Award Recipient

Barry Johnson is the recipient of the 2025 Davie-Davis Public Service Award.

Johnson is a Non-Resident Fellow in the Urban-Brooking Tax Policy Center.  His research focuses on expanding access to data for evidence building, improving the quality and utility of administrative data for statistical uses, protecting data confidentiality, and measuring distributions of income and wealth. 

Barry recently retired from the United States Internal Revenue Service, after more than 37 years of service. From January 2024-January 2025, he was the IRS Chief Data and Analytics Officer, a role that included leading the Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics Division in a wide range of projects to improve tax administration, including oversight of the Service’s uses of Artificial Intelligence. He spent most of his career in the IRS Statistics of Income Division, where he served as Director from June 2014- September 2024. In this role, he lead the collection and dissemination of data and statistics on the U.S. tax system and advised the Treasury Department on statistical activities.  As SOI Director, he also served on the Office of Management and Budget’s Interagency Council on Statistical Policy, where he championed projects related to improving the quality and accessibility of statistical data for evidence-building and policymaking.  

Barry is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a recipient of the Association’s Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics with honors from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in economics from The American University.

A full list of previous winners can be found here.