United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on the Census,

Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery

Expected at

10:00 a.m. EST

Thursday

March 26, 1998

DECENNIAL CENSUS

Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the

Challenges for 2000

Statement of L. Nye Stevens

Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues

General Government Division

GAO/T-GGD-98-84

Summary 

Decennial Census: Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

The dress rehearsal for the 2000 Census is currently under way at three

sites: Sacramento, CA; 11 counties in the Columbia, SC, area; and

Menominee County in Wisconsin, including the Menominee American

Indian Reservation. Although it was originally intended to demonstrate the

Census Bureau’s plans for the 2000 Census, the dress rehearsal will instead

leave a number of design and operational issues unresolved. These

unresolved issues led GAO in 1997 to raise concerns about the high risk of a

failed census in 2000.

Accurate address lists and associated maps are the building blocks of a

successful census. However, the Bureau has concluded that its original

procedures for building the 2000 Census address list might not meet its

goal of being 99 percent complete. Although the Bureau has since revised

its address list development procedures, they will not be tested during the

dress rehearsal, thus it will not be known until the 2000 Census whether

they will meet the Bureau’s goal.

The Bureau’s outreach and promotion initiatives are designed to boost

mail response rates and thus avoid costly follow-ups to nonresponding

households. While the Bureau is to rely on partnerships with local

governments and organizations to raise public awareness of the census,

the level of participation in these efforts has been inconsistent during the

dress rehearsal, suggesting their impact on public response in 2000 may be

limited.

Uncertainties surround the Bureau’s ability to staff the 295,000 mostly

temporary office and field positions necessary to conduct the census.

Census jobs may not be as attractive as other positions, and, if current

trends continue, the Bureau could find itself competing for workers in a

tight labor market.

The Bureau’s sampling and statistical estimation procedures, while they

could reduce costs and improve accuracy if properly implemented, face

methodological, technological, and quality control challenges.

In addition to these operational challenges, the Bureau has not finalized its

plans for evaluating the dress rehearsal, thus it is not known whether the

evaluations will provide needed data to assess the feasibility of the

Bureau’s plans for the 2000 Census. Further, Congress has not endorsed

the Bureau’s overall design of the 2000 Census because of its concerns

over the Bureau’s plans to use statistical sampling and estimation

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Summary 

Decennial Census: Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

procedures. The longer this impasse continues, the greater the likelihood

of a failed census.

Page 2 GAO/T-GGD-98-84
Statement 

Decennial Census: Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the U.S. Census Bureau’s

preparations and operational plans for its dress rehearsal for the 2000

Census, which is currently under way at three sites: Sacramento, CA; 11

counties in the Columbia, SC, area; and Menominee County in Wisconsin,

including the Menominee American Indian Reservation. To the extent that

the dress rehearsal mirrors the actual census, the dress rehearsal could

foreshadow how well key census-taking activities might work in the

decennial, and thus indicate where additional congressional and Bureau

attention is needed now to ensure successful results in 2000. My overall

point today is that the dress rehearsal, originally contemplated as a

concerted demonstration of a well-defined census design for 2000, instead

will leave a number of design and operational questions unanswered.

These unresolved issues led us in 1997 to raise concerns about the high

risk of a failed census in 2000.

At your request, my statement focuses on the progress, if any, that the

Bureau has made since July 1997,1

 when we reported that the risk of a

failed census in 2000 had increased since we originally designated the 2000

Census as a high-risk area in February 1997.2

 Specifically, we pay special

attention to the challenges the Bureau faces in implementing such key

census-taking activities as (1) creating a complete and accurate address

list, (2) increasing the mail response rate through outreach and promotion,

(3) staffing census-taking operations with an adequate workforce, and

(4) carrying out its sampling and statistical estimation procedures. These

subjects are covered extensively in our report prepared at the request of

the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Committee on

Governmental Affairs, which we are making available today.3

 I also

provide my preliminary observations on the status of the Bureau’s dress

rehearsal evaluation program.

To develop our report, we reviewed Bureau documents that describe the

Bureau’s plans and procedures for the dress rehearsal, and interviewed

Bureau headquarters and regional officials. To help verify the Bureau’s

information and also obtain a local perspective on the dress rehearsal

activities, we (1) visited the Sacramento and South Carolina dress

1

2000 Census: Progress Made on Design, but Risks Remain (GAO/GGD-97-142, July 14, 1997).

2

High-Risk Series (GAO/HR-97-2, Feb. 1997).

3

2000 Census: Preparations for Dress Rehearsal Leave Many Unanswered Questions (GAO/GGD-98-74,

March 26, 1998).

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Statement 

Decennial Census: Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

rehearsal sites, and contacted Menominee officials by telephone;

(2) conducted in-person and telephone interviews with local officials on

their experiences in reviewing address lists, promoting the census,

andrecruiting and hiring census workers; and (3) where applicable,

reviewed relevant documents on these activities.

Information on the Bureau’s dress rehearsal evaluation program was

obtained by conducting a content analysis of the Bureau’s evaluation

proposals and by interviewing cognizant Bureau officials. Since the

Bureau has yet to finalize its evaluation plans, our observations should be

considered preliminary.

Background The 1990 Census was the most costly in history, and it produced data that

were less accurate than those from the 1980 Census. About 6 million

persons were counted twice in the 1990 Census, while 10 million persons

were missed—for a total of 16 million gross errors in the count. Of

particular concern was the fact that the 1990 Census was more likely to

miss minority groups and renters, particularly those living in rural areas.

To address the problems that occurred in 1990, the Bureau redesigned key

components of the census, such as procedures for developing a complete

and accurate address list, increasing the mail response rate through

outreach and promotion, staffing census-taking operations with a capable

workforce, and reducing costs and improving accuracy through sampling

and statistical estimation. However, Congress has not endorsed the

Bureau’s overall design because of its concerns over the validity, legality,

and operational feasibility of the Bureau’s statistical sampling and

estimation procedures. Because of the significant and long-standing

operational and technical challenges that the Bureau faces in taking the

census, and the continuing disagreement between Congress and the

administration over the use of sampling, in February 1997, we designated

the 2000 Decennial Census as being at high risk for wasted expenditures

and unsatisfactory results.4

 In July 1997, with still no agreement and

uncertainties surrounding the feasibility of some key census operations,

we reported that risks of a failed census in 2000 had increased.5

According to the Bureau, questionnaires are to be delivered to residents of

the dress rehearsal sites by April 1, 1998. The Bureau is encouraging

respondents to return their questionnaires by Dress Rehearsal Census

4

High-Risk Series (GAO/HR-97-2, Feb. 1997).

5

2000 Census: Progress Made on Design, but Risks Remain (GAO/GGD-97-142, July 14, 1997).

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Decennial Census: Preparations for Dress

Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

Day—April 18, 1998. However, as is the case with the actual census, the

Bureau’s dress rehearsal activities span a much wider period of time than

this single day. Following the selection of the dress rehearsal sites in July

1996, the Bureau developed preliminary mailing lists and materials for

these locations, contacted local governments at the three sites, and

conducted staffing activities to hire temporary census employees in those

locations. Similarly, after April 18, the Bureau is to develop its census

count by conducting the necessary follow-up activities at nonresponding

households and completing other fieldwork.

The key to a successful dress rehearsal is making it as much like the

decennial census as possible. Thus, according to the Bureau, the dress

rehearsal for the 2000 Census should test nearly all of the various

operations, procedures, and questions that are planned for the decennial

under as census-like conditions as feasible.

However, as an indication of increasing congressional concern over the

Bureau’s plans for the 2000 Census, the administration and Congress

agreed, as part of a compromise over the Bureau’s fiscal year 1998

appropriation,6

 that the Bureau would use sampling and statistical

estimation methods only in the Sacramento site, rather than at all three

dress rehearsal sites as it plans to do nationally in 2000. In the Columbia

site, the Bureau is to follow up on all nonresponding households just as it

did nationwide in the 1990 Census. At the Menominee dress rehearsal site,

the Bureau is also to follow-up on all nonresponding households, but is to

use sampling and statistical estimation to improve the accuracy of the

population count. Although use of the different methods at the dress

rehearsal sites invites a comparison of the results, the dress rehearsal is

not a test of competing census designs. Geographic, demographic, and

possibly other differences among the dress rehearsal locations preclude

such a comparison.

Preparations for the

Dress Rehearsal

Underscore the

Challenges to a

Successful Census

At a point in the census cycle when the Bureau should be finalizing its

approach, it instead finds itself revising some of its basic operational

plans. The key census-taking activities that we examined are all facing

operational challenges that could jeopardize the 2000 Census. This,

combined with the continuing disagreement between Congress and the

administration over the design of the 2000 Census, increases the likelihood

6

Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations

Act, 1998, P.L. 105-119, Nov. 26, 1997.

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Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

of a failed census—one on which the nation would have spent billions of

dollars and still have demonstrably inaccurate results.

The Accuracy of the

Bureau’s Address Lists and

Maps Is Uncertain, and

Local Reviews May Be Too

Sporadic to Greatly

Improve Them

Complete and accurate address lists, along with precise maps, are the

foundation of a successful census. Accurate addresses are essential for

delivering questionnaires, avoiding unnecessary and expensive follow-up

efforts at vacant or nonexistent residences, and establishing a universe of

households for sampling and statistical estimation. Accurate maps are

critical for assigning correct portions of the population to their proper

locations—an operation that is the foundation of congressional

redistricting.

To build its address list, which is known as the Master Address File (MAF),

the Bureau initially planned, in part, to (1) use addresses provided by the

Postal Service, (2) merge these addresses with the address file the Bureau

created during the 1990 Census, (3) conduct limited checks of the

accuracy of selected addresses, and (4) send the addresses to local

governments for verification as part of a process called Local Update of

Census Addresses (LUCA). However, the Bureau’s analyses of the

completeness of the Postal Service’s addresses, when combined with the

Bureau’s 1990 addresses for a selected number of locations, have shown

that the resulting address list was not always complete. For example,

address lists created in 1995 for two test locations did not include from 3.6

to 6.4 percent of the addresses identified through other Bureau operations,

such as field verification.

Following these and similar analyses for lists created in 1996, the Bureau

concluded in September 1997 that primary reliance on the Postal Service’s

and the Bureau’s 1990 address files was not sufficient, and that it needed

to redesign its procedures in order to build a MAF for the 2000 Census that,

as a whole, is 99 percent complete. Under the new procedures, which are

estimated to cost an additional $108.7 million, the Bureau now plans to

canvass neighborhoods across the nation to physically verify the

completeness and accuracy of the address file for the 2000 Census prior to

local address review. While the components of the new approach have

been used and tested in prior censuses, the Bureau has not used or tested

them either in concert with each other or in the sequence as presently

designed for use in the 2000 Census, and does not plan to do so in the

dress rehearsal. Consequently, it will not be known until the 2000 Census

whether the Bureau’s redesigned procedures will allow it to meet its goal.

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Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

Further, the dress rehearsal results to date suggest that LUCA may be too

inconsistent and face too many obstacles to systematically verify or

increase the accuracy of the MAF. For example, despite the Bureau’s efforts

to encourage all local jurisdictions to participate, just 34 of the 60 local

jurisdictions involved with the dress rehearsal participated in LUCA.

Reasons for the low participation rate included the lack of resources

and/or information to review address lists or maps at the local level.

Jurisdictions that participated in LUCA said that problems with the level of

Bureau assistance, as well as with the accuracy and completeness of the

address lists and maps, impeded their review efforts.

Although the Bureau’s reengineered address development procedures call

for obtaining earlier assistance from local governments to review

addresses and maps, this does not address other problems encountered by

local officials in reviewing address lists during the dress rehearsal, such as

the unavailability of Bureau assistance and the inconsistent quality of the

address list and maps.

The Bureau’s Outreach and

Promotion Efforts Face

Obstacles That Could

Impede Its Ability to

Achieve Its Mail Response

Rate Objective

To help increase the mail response rate and thus reduce its costly

nonresponse follow-up workload, the Bureau plans to partner with local

governments and other organizations to raise public awareness of the

census. The Bureau expects that its outreach and promotion efforts,

combined with other initiatives, such as simplified census questionnaires,

should produce a mail response rate of 66.9 percent for the 2000 Census.

This is 12 percentage points higher than the 55-percent response rate that

the Bureau expects it would achieve without these activities and slightly

higher than the 65-percent response rate achieved in the 1990 Census.

Nevertheless, the Bureau’s experience thus far during the dress rehearsal

suggests that, in 2000, this goal might be difficult to achieve.

According to the Bureau, the success of its outreach and promotion efforts

will depend heavily on the effectiveness of the partnerships it hopes to

build with state, local, and tribal governments; the private sector; various

media; and other organizations. Citing agency policy, the Bureau has said

that it is unable to fund local outreach and promotion efforts. It is

therefore placing a priority on working with partners because they can

help publicize the census, foster participation, and dispel myths, among

other activities.

A critical component of the Bureau’s local outreach and promotion efforts

are Complete Count Committees (CCC). Consisting of elected, business,

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Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

community, social service, religious, and other local leaders, CCCs are to

help mobilize grassroots promotion efforts. However, not all of the dress

rehearsal jurisdictions where the Bureau hoped to establish committees

had done so at the time of our review. For example, in South Carolina, of

the 11 counties and the City of Columbia participating in the dress

rehearsal, just 3 counties and Columbia had active committees at the time

of our review. The eight remaining counties either had not started

committees or had formed committees that subsequently became inactive.

We found that the operational problems the CCCs were encountering had

several sources. Among these were communication difficulties between

the CCCs and the Bureau. Four of the six active CCCs we contacted at the

three dress rehearsal sites indicated that the Bureau did not set clear

expectations for their CCCs, especially when they were first initiated,

and/or Bureau guidance and literature had been minimal.

Another element of the Bureau’s outreach and promotion strategy is a paid

advertising campaign. In the 1990 Census, the Bureau relied on pro bono

public service advertising to get its message across. In October 1997, the

Bureau announced that it had awarded its 2000 Census paid-advertising

contract to Young & Rubicam, which is a private advertising agency. The

Bureau has budgeted about $100 million dollars for this effort, of which

about 80 percent has been earmarked for buying advertising in print and

broadcast media. Nevertheless, the advertising agency faces not only the

familiar task of developing public awareness of the census, but also the

greater challenge of motivating people to return their questionnaires in

spite of a long-term decline in the mail response rate. While the Bureau

found that 93 percent of the public was aware of the census in 1990, the

mail response rate was only 65 percent, 10 percentage points lower than it

was in 1980.

The Bureau Could

Encounter Difficulties

Staffing the 2000 Census

For the 2000 Census, the Bureau estimates that it will need to recruit over

2.6 million applicants to fill about 295,000 positions. Aside from the large

numbers of people needed, hiring census workers could be difficult

because most census jobs are part-time and temporary and do not come

with such benefits as health insurance. Consequently, potential applicants

may not find census jobs as attractive as alternative work opportunities.

To address this staffing challenge, the Bureau plans to focus its

recruitment efforts on people already employed who are seeking

additional work (“moonlighters”), and retirees. The Bureau also plans to

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2000

pay employees a wage that is based on local rates and to offer productivity

incentives. However, if current employment trends continue, the Bureau

could find itself recruiting workers in a tighter labor market than prevailed

in 1990. Furthermore, the Bureau’s decision to focus its recruitment efforts

on moonlighters and retirees is based on informal discussions with census

workers during the 1995 Census Test, the hiring practices of private survey

research firms, and census workforce studies that may not necessarily be

comparable to the 2000 Census situation.

The Bureau’s Sampling and

Statistical Estimation

Design Faces Several

Uncertainties

Declining response rates have posed problems for the Bureau since it

began its mail-out/mail-back procedure in 1970. Hundreds of thousands of

additional enumerators must be hired to collect census information from

an increasing number of nonresponding households. To reduce its

nonresponse follow-up workload, the Bureau plans to sample

nonresponding households for the 2000 Census. The Bureau has also

designed a procedure called Integrated Coverage Measurement (ICM) by

which it is to take a separate sample after the nonresponse follow-up is

completed to make adjustments to the census counts. However, these

activities face several challenges.

For example, it is uncertain whether the Bureau can complete its

nonresponse follow-up and ICM operations in the time allotted, considering

that in 1990 similar processes took longer even though the amount of work

was less. In 1990, the Bureau allowed 4 weeks from Census Day for mail

response before beginning nonresponse follow-up. In 2000, the Bureau

also plans to allow 4 weeks from Census Day for mail response. In 1990,

nonresponse follow-up was scheduled to last 6 weeks, but in some

locations lasted 14 weeks.7

 For the 2000 Census, the Bureau will again

allow 6 weeks for completion of nonresponse follow-up. In 1990, an

operation similar to the ICM was not completed until January 4, 1991, while

for the 2000 Census, the Bureau plans to perform the same tasks for five

times the number of households by the end of September 2000.

Uncertainties also surround the Bureau’s ability to achieve its target of a

98 percent questionnaire completion rate for ICM operations. If the ICM

completion rate falls below 98 percent, there is increased risk that

ICM-based adjustments to census data may not accurately reflect different

segments of the population. The need to obtain a high response rate in a

short time could require the Bureau to collect data from neighbors and

7

In 1990, Bureau enumerators were able to complete about 90 percent of their followup workload

within 8 weeks, with the final 10 percent requiring more than 6 weeks to complete.

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Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

other individuals outside of the nonresponding households, a method that

in the past has been shown to be less accurate.

A Rigorous Dress

Rehearsal Evaluation

Program Is Critical to

the Ultimate Success

of the Census

A properly designed evaluation program that provides information on the

cost, performance, required resources, timing of various census

operations, and the quality and completeness of census data, is essential

for the Bureau to assess the feasibility of its operational plans. We believe

that, to be most effective, the evaluation effort needs to begin with a

determination of what information will be required to support critical

decisions and when that information needs to be available to Bureau and

other decisionmakers. However, we are concerned that, with Dress

Rehearsal Census Day a little over 3 weeks away, the Bureau’s evaluation

program plan is still a work in progress, and that uncertainties surround

the Bureau’s approaches and methodologies for carrying out specific

studies.

According to the Bureau, its dress rehearsal evaluation program or “report

card” is designed to validate plans for the 2000 Census, measure coverage

of persons and housing units, and evaluate the completeness and quality of

census data. Specifically, it is to consist of

• a status report to track the performance of key census operations at

different points in time during the rehearsal,

• a quality assurance checkpoint system to monitor key dress rehearsal

processes and signal where additional assistance is necessary to ensure

operations remain on track, and

• a series of evaluations to determine how good the census data is in terms

of statistical and other quality measures.

The Bureau plans to establish a set of performance standards for

measuring success at each site. Such performance standards are to

measure, for example, the completeness of the MAF and the effectiveness

of the paid advertising campaign. The standards, however, will not be used

to measure the operational performance of one site against another.

In the March 10, 1998, draft of its evaluation program—the Bureau’s

latest—the Bureau presented plans for 36 evaluations covering 8

census-taking operations, including address list development, coverage

improvement activities, and nonresponse follow-up and field procedures.

However, even though key dress rehearsal operations are already under

way—and some have been completed—the Bureau has not finalized its

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Rehearsal Underscore the Challenges for

2000

evaluation plans, and the methodologies for some of these evaluations are

not sufficiently defined to provide assurances that needed evaluation data

will be available on a timely basis. The Bureau continues to complete the

methodological details of its evaluations, and plans to issue those details

as they are finished.

In summary, although the Bureau has made progress in addressing some

of the problems that occurred during the 1990 Census, key activities

continue to face operational challenges at a disturbingly late stage in the

census cycle when the Bureau should be fine tuning rather than revising

its basic operational plans. Moreover, the ongoing lack of an agreement

between Congress and the administration over the final design of the 2000

Census has only added to the challenges facing the Bureau. So long as this

condition persists, the risk of a failed census in 2000 will continue to

increase.

We look forward to supporting congressional oversight of the planning

and conduct of the decennial census, and we will continue monitoring the

dress rehearsal and the census evaluation program, as well as the Bureau’s

preparations for the decennial census.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased

to answer any questions you or other members of the Subcommittee may

have.

(410306) Page 11 GAO/T-GGD-98-84
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