U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

66–613 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF

BUREAU OF THE CENSUS OPERATIONS AND

ACTIVITIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 8, 2000

Serial No. 106–148

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

——— ———

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JANE COBB, Staff Director

LARA CHAMBERLAIN, Professional Staff Member

AMY ALTHOFF, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

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C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 8, 2000 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director of the Census, accompanied by John Thompson .................................................................................................................. 19

Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York:

Letter dated March 8, 2000 ...................................................................... 11

Observation Guidelines for Census 2000 Operations ............................. 61

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 17

Miller, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 5

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director of the Census:

Letter dated March 20, 2000 .................................................................... 45

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 25

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OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF

BUREAU OF THE CENSUS OPERATIONS AND

ACTIVITIES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Miller (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, and Maloney.

Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Timothy J. Maney, chief

investigator; Chip Walker, communications director; Erin Yeatman,

press secretary; Lara Chamberlain, professional staff member; Amy

Althoff, clerk; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk.

Mr. MILLER. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, the subcommittee will come to order, and we will proceed. It is my understanding there may be a vote around 2 o’clock, so we may have to

take a vote break at that time.

Good afternoon. Today, we are here to examine the ongoing operations for the 2000 census. In our monthly public review of this

process, once again, Dr. Prewitt, Director of the Census Bureau is

before us, and next week the GAO will come before the subcommittee as well.

Since our last hearing, there have been several new developments that have not been positive. The Salvation Army has declined to let Census enumerators into homeless shelters and soup

kitchens. If there is any way that we in this subcommittee can assist you in this matter, Dr. Prewitt, or in any similar matters,

please let us know.

There are also serious recruiting shortages across the country in

a number of hard-to-enumerate areas. And we are all aware of the

very serious addressing error of approximately 120 million

prenotification letters.

Also today, this subcommittee will address the lack of access to

the Census Bureau operations and information for the subcommittee, the General Accounting Office and the Census Monitoring

Board.

Just last week, I spoke to the GAO, who complained of lack of

access and delayed responses to information requests. The GAO

made it clear to me that much of the information they requested

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should be readily available to regional and local managers if they

are truly getting the timely information they need to make daily

decisions in the field.

The Census Monitoring Board fights tooth and nail to get information it needs to conduct its oversight responsibilities. The Census Monitoring Board was set up under agreement with the President to assist Congress in its oversight duties. Employees of the

Census Monitoring Board are Title 13, sworn and entitled to all information just as this subcommittee or the GAO is. Currently, the

Census Monitoring Board has more than 30 requests outstanding,

refused, or delayed more than 60 days for information with the Bureau. Director Prewitt, this is unacceptable.

The experience of my own subcommittee has been troubling as

well. Critical information such as recruiting numbers or contact information has not been provided in a timely manner. A recent request made to obtain the Bureau’s recruiting numbers took almost

2 weeks to be answered.

Rather than just provide us the information we ask for, different

delaying tactics seem to be used. In some cases, the subcommittee

has been questioned as to what we plan to do with this information. This turns the role of Congress and government agencies on

its head. This is the people’s census. This subcommittee has a right

to any and all information we deem appropriate.

While some at the Bureau may feel that oversight entities are a

burden on the Census process, you must understand that it is our

legal responsibility to investigate, evaluate and assess the hundreds of activities that involve the expenditure of $7 billion of public funds to carry out the constitutionally mandated decennial census.

The combined resources of this subcommittee, the GAO and the

Census Monitoring Board is barely sufficient to oversee the massive undertaking of the Census Bureau. As you have so accurately

noted, this is the largest peacetime mobilization in our Nation’s

history, with hundreds of thousands of workers and 520 local Census offices.

The combined resources of the subcommittee, the GAO, the Census Monitoring Board and the Inspector General pale in comparison to the Bureau’s massive operations. We are talking about

roughly 42 people between the IG, the GAO, the Census Monitoring Board and the subcommittee overseeing the 520 Census offices,

hundreds of ongoing Census operations, more than 800,000 positions and $7 billion in expenditures.

By now, I am sure you are aware of my concerns regarding the

unprecedented stalls and delays in gaining access to basic information. I am requesting your help in breaking down these barriers so

that we—in Congress, the Census Monitoring Board, the GAO and

the IG—may fulfill our responsibilities under law and in an efficient and timely manner.

Director Prewitt, you made a pledge that this would be a transparent Census. Unfortunately, it has been rather opaque. In light

of these access issues, I have found it necessary to call a hearing

specifically on the lack of proper access. This will be held on March

23 at 2 p.m. I hope these access concerns are sufficiently resolved

well beforehand.

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Last month’s revelation of the addressing error made by Freedom

Graphic Systems on the prenotification letter is a serious matter.

The Census Bureau has spent the better part of this decade developing its Master Address File.

The heart of the Census is a good address list, because the bulk

of enumeration is based on mail-out/mail back responses. Now this

error doesn’t appear to be contained within the MAF itself. However, the fact that the addresses were misprinted is still troubling.

Regardless of how good the MAF is, if the addressing is compromised anywhere along the process it can still pose serious and,

in some cases, crippling problems. This error underscores the serious need for aggressive oversight by this subcommittee.

While I have publicly urged those receiving Census forms to read

them, no matter what the address they may read on the envelope,

and while the Postal Service has said it will deliver the letters to

the correct addresses, I cannot share your determination that this

error is cosmetic and not operational.

I don’t believe that anyone knows if a misaddressed envelope

sent to ‘‘Resident’’ is less likely to be read than it otherwise would

have been. The importance of the prenotification letters to the

hard-to-enumerate communities, especially those not speaking

English, is high.

The prenotification letter also allows those speaking one of five

other languages besides English, to choose that language for the

Census questionnaire. Unfortunately, there may be another problem emerging from this mailing list. The Washington Times and

other newspapers are reporting today that it now seems those who

speak only English are confused by the lack of explanations for the

mailing and the return envelope inside. The subcommittee understood that these mailings had been fully tested in focus groups. The

subcommittee will certainly want to see the focus group testing results to understand how this mailing was developed.

In light of these concerns, the subcommittee will be investigating

this matter fully. We are enlisting the support of the Commerce

Department’s Inspector General, as well as the General Accounting

Office.

This error also, once again, casts doubt on the ability of the Census Bureau to carry out one of the most complicated statistic experiments ever, better known as A.C.E.

I would like to publicly thank the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal

Service has already stepped up to the plate to help the Census Bureau and, in fact, America, by making a pledge to deliver the

misaddressed letters to the proper households.

Dr. Prewitt, we all know hiring is so critical to a successful Census. You note that nationally the hiring is going according to schedule; however, when one looks at hiring locally, a different picture

emerges.

In recent weeks, the subcommittee staff has visited local Census

offices that are having severe hiring problems in San Diego, Los

Angeles, San Francisco and the Salt River Indian Community outside of Phoenix. Similar problems are found by the Monitoring

Board in New York City.

To be fair, these visits also found local Census offices that were

ahead of schedule, in Long Beach and Tukwila, WA. However, it

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is the ones behind schedule that have us concerned. Here in DC,

the recent stories in both the Washington Times and the Post have

highlighted local hiring shortages. In fact, recent news reports have

caused Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to call for an emergency

meeting among local officials to solve this problem. An emergency

job summit will be held later this month, and I applaud Ms. Norton

on her quick action.

I am not totally convinced that the Bureau has a handle on this

hiring problem. Looking at hiring nationally does not give one a

true sense of where we stand. I hope you can shed some light on

these important local hiring issues. Many of these communities are

hard to locate and count.

Again, Dr. Prewitt, thank you for coming before the subcommittee, and we look forward to the opportunity to ask some questions.

Mrs. Maloney.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Miller follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome again, Dr. Prewitt.

As the Census Bureau begins the most intensive operations of

the 2000 census, Congress and the American public need to stay

informed on the progress of the largest peacetime mobilization in

American history.

I am happy to say, from reading your testimony, Dr. Prewitt,

that it appears that the 2000 census operations are on schedule,

and as of today, there are no major problems. A year ago, many

prophets of doom questioned the likely success of the 2000 census.

While we are far from done, I think we can all take pride in the

excellent work of the career professionals at the Census Bureau in

successfully meeting the major milestones to date.

Dr. Prewitt, some might have scoffed if you had appeared before

this committee a year ago and predicted that today the Census Bureau would have all 520 local Census offices up and running, fully

equipped, with computers and telecommunications installed and totally operational; that the Master Address File of 120 million addresses, which may be the most complete ever, due to improved

processes, including LUCA and new construction programs, would

be completed and in use; that one of my favorite initiatives, the

Census in the Schools Programs, would have exceeded its original

goals and sent out over 1.3 million teaching kits to schools around

the Nation; that the telephone questionnaire assistance centers

would be opened, running and fully operational; that the data capture centers and the software they use would be tested and already

processing forms; that questionnaires would already be delivered to

rural areas; that questionnaires would already be filed through the

Internet; that over 90,000 partnerships between the Census and

cities, towns, businesses and churches would be up and running;

that the highly acclaimed paid advertising campaign would now be

going into full gear.

In the interest of time, I won’t keep going through all of the lists

of initiatives that your office has put into place, but I do want to

mention my new favorite Census promotional tool, the Census Promotional Tour Bus that is on the road and educating people.

I spent a day riding around my region on the bus, talking to people. I think it is absolutely an excellent tool. I wish we had more

of them in our areas or regions across the country. I think they are

very, very effective.

I am sure there are some even in this room who would have—

well, let us be polite—questioned you for being overly optimistic.

More importantly, even a few months ago, if you would have told

this committee that recruiting would be above target and going

well, I can only imagine what some would have said. While there

are places in the country that have recruiting problems, on a national level, recruiting is above target.

Given the Clinton-Gore prosperity our Nation is currently experiencing, with historically low unemployment levels, the success of

the Bureau’s recruiting efforts is all the more remarkable.

I don’t want to imply that things are perfect, because there is

still a great deal of work that needs to be done, and we know there

will be problems. The recent mishap with the addressing of the notification letter is an example. I would like to mention that I did

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receive my letter; I have it right here. It came over the weekend,

so it came to my home, and it was delivered.

I am pleased that the Post Office reports that there have been

no operational problems with this mailing, and they should be commended for the extra effort taken to ensure that all 120 million letters arrived on time.

But on the whole, we are in as good as shape as one could hope,

given our recent history and given the fact that the Census Bureau

had to revamp its program only last year to integrate $1.6 billion

worth of additional effort as a result of litigation by the opponents

of modern statistical methods.

In fact, I would say that one reason the Census is on track as

of today is because many of us in Congress and President Clinton

resisted the efforts of some to micromanage the Census and left

that up to the professionals in the Census department.

I would only hope that as we proceed and problems develop that

we can keep all the people looking over your shoulder—this committee, the Monitoring Board, the GAO, the IG, the National Academy of Sciences and the advisory groups—that we can keep them

over your shoulder and out of your lap, so that you can do your job

without being disrupted.

Mr. Chairman, I know you share my concern that we cannot

harm the Census with overzealous oversight. While we should conduct oversight, we cannot afford to do so in such an overpowering

way that the staff of the Census Bureau cannot get their job done.

And in talking about oversight, I would like to really put in the

record the cochair of the Census Monitoring Board, Mr. Blackwell’s

letter, which he carbon-copied to many people, but he left me out,

in which he notes 31 areas, centers that he wants to see. I would

like that in the record along with my comments.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. Again, as we proceed, there will be problems, big

and small, but I would remind everyone that this is a massive,

complicated process. I read in today’s Washington Post, and I

have—they have an article here, a small article, that a few hundred people out of the 120 million contacted complained they were

confused about the postage-paid envelope included; for those who

know what they are reading—and that story is good news—33,000

envelopes were returned from people requesting language forms on

the first day.

In America, to have a few hundred people call and complain

about a mailing to 120 million people is pretty good, especially if

it guarantees Americans with limited English skills can respond to

the Census.

As I said, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to learn that the timetables

and tests for the 2000 census are currently on track. I look forward

to hearing the details of the many Census operations from our witness, Director Prewitt.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MILLER. The record will identify that all three answered in

the affirmative. And, Dr. Prewitt, your opening statement.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR OF THE

CENSUS, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN THOMPSON

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do

have an opening statement. I will try to go through it quickly. I

might say that it does not address the issues raised in your opening statement; instead, it addresses the issues that are of course

in the invitation letter.

I would hope that before the hearing is completed, I will have a

chance to address the issues you raised in your opening statements.

Mr. MILLER. The first set of questions.

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you. Let me start by identifying the major

operations and preparation for census 2000 that have been successfully completed so far, to reiterate some of the things that Congresswoman Maloney just mentioned.

The Master Address File of 120 million addresses is, of course,

complete and we think quite accurate.

Our field network of 12 regional offices and 520 Census offices,

local offices, are open and are hard at work.

We printed 85 different Census forms, which will go to the addresses in our address file, and developed and implemented our

ambitious paid advertising campaign and signed up 90,000 partners.

All of this happened without a glitch? No, of course not. There

were endless issues, large and small, that had to be resolved.

The Census is a vast, multipart, rapidly moving system involving

hundreds of operations and hundreds of thousands of temporary

employees. On a daily basis, we have to deal with problems such

as the fire in one, flood in another of our local Census offices, the

need to develop special procedures for handling the temporarily

displaced persons from the North Carolina flood, to deal with the

issue that you addressed in your own opening comments, the Salvation Army response to our attempt to count in their soup kitchens, the backlogs caused by the higher-than-expected demand for

Census in the Schools, two separate bomb threats in a local Census

office, a misspelling on a poster, public confusion among some

English-speaking residents about the lack of instruction in the advance letter.

Indeed, another small issue that has come up—and I want to

thank you and Mrs. Maloney for your statements concerning this—

was the recent mailing that appeared to mimic an official Census

form, but in fact, was simply a fundraising device.

We are very concerned that the deceptive mailings could reduce

mail response by sowing confusion about what is or what is not an

official Census form. The point is, we are in the process of successfully dealing with each of these issues, and the list is far from exhaustive. New ones will take their place tomorrow and the next

day and every day until the census is completed.

While such issues require attention and resources, while they

can be frustrating, while they often generate news stories we then

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try to correct, they are not of a nature to put the census at risk.

Such an issue could arise, but to date it has not. Indeed, the most

significant issue to date has been the addressing error on the advance letter, but as we all know, this was not of a character that

put the census at risk. And I will address in more detail, of course,

the issue of the advance letter in the question-and-answer period,

if you wish.

I should say that all of our indications are that the advance letter is being correctly mailed and, indeed, it is being read. I will

give you one indicator of that, sir, the advance letter has a website

address which is a job website address. Prior to the mailing of the

advance letter, we were running about 100,000 hits a day to that

website. The last—yesterday or the day before yesterday, last time

I was able to get the data, there were 1 million hits on that

website, 1 million hits. That is in a multiple of 10, so that suggested to me that people are reading the letter and responding to

it. And as the Congresswoman just said, we are already getting a

flow of requests for our language forms.

We have taken additional steps in our advertising campaign with

our community partners and through the media to stress the importance of the advance letter. We have done this because we do

stress its importance, particularly because of the fact that it is the

vehicle for getting a language form; but also because it is a way

to address the job issue, and it is a way to increase awareness, although I can say that awareness right now is very high about the

census.

The point is that when I last testified to you, I pledged to you

that I would bring to your attention any problems in the implementation of census 2000 that, in my judgment, could put the census

at risk. After that testimony, I subsequently advised you by letter

of the several categories in which a serious or systemic problem

could occur in the current timeframe, that is, between that testimony and today.

In that letter, I identified the fact that we had to launch our update/leave operation, and that if we were unsuccessful in launching

that, that would be serious. I addressed the fact of possible problems with our payroll system, our problems filling our enumerator

positions, our address file problem that would prevent our employees from being able to fulfill their responsibilities, or a breakdown

in the telephone questionnaire assistance operation. All of those operations had been launched on schedule and successfully. It doesn’t

mean something won’t happen tomorrow, but as of today, there is

simply nothing going on in the Census operations that puts the

census itself at risk.

I want to add to that list because a lot of new things are going

to happen between now and the next testimony—and I now refer

to the March 29th testimony when I am scheduled to testify before

a different committee, that is, the House Appropriations Subcommittee of which you are a member, of course, Mr. Chairman.

By March 29th, we expect to complete the update/leave operation, mail out the questionnaires in the mailout/mailback areas,

begin the data capture process, start enumeration of special populations, and begin reporting to the Nation the mailback response

rate as part of our ‘‘90 Plus Five’’ campaign.

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Major problems could develop during this period, including

breakdowns in data capture systems or in questionnaire delivery,

unexpectedly low mail response rates, any event that could undermine faith in the confidentiality of the data, such as a hacker on

our Internet site, or a failure to meet our promise to provide the

mailback response rate to the public.

I don’t anticipate those happening, but I want to put them on the

record as the categories of things that I would quickly get to your

attention if we begin to experience serious problems.

So I today renew my pledge to keep you informed should major

census-threatening problems develop in these areas or any others.

I am not anticipating such problems. I expect our scheduled hearing will keep you apprised of any potential changes needed to ensure that census 2000 data are of the highest quality.

You specifically asked, of course, about a number of operations.

I will try to cover those quickly. You asked about the status of the

census 2000 operational timeline, and readiness for key activities.

As I mentioned already, we began the update/leave operation on

March 3rd, as planned. We are running today slightly ahead of

schedule in terms of getting the update/leave questionnaires out.

Census enumerators are leaving questionnaires at approximately

24 million housing units, including Puerto Rico, that have several

different address types.

Telephone questionnaire assistance centers also began on March

3rd, and will run through June 8th with six toll-free telephone

numbers in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and

Tagalog, where people can call to get assistance in filling out their

questionnaires, get language assistance guides or provide their

Census questionnaire information over the phone. Indeed, we have

already recorded 500 short forms over the telephone system. The

questionnaire assistance center is up and running. That doesn’t

mean we won’t have a problem with it tomorrow, but as of today,

I am confident that we are able to handle the flow of telephone

calls.

We have also identified 27,000 sites for our questionnaire assistance center operations. And as I already mentioned, we have already mailed the advance letter, and in 5 days—indeed, sometimes

the Post Office gets a bit ahead of us, so I am already getting reports that some forms are out—but in 5 days, from March 13th to

March 15th, the Postal Service will deliver questionnaires to some

98 million addresses in the mailout/mailback areas. These questionnaires are all at the postal delivery centers and are ready to

be delivered.

Also, beginning March 13th and continuing through March and

April, Census enumerators will visit about half a million housing

units in our list/enumerate areas, in an operation similar to that

initiated in Alaska on January 19th. These are the remote, sparsely populated areas where it is not efficient to compile a pre-census

address list.

And then on March 20th, we will mail out a reminder card to

those housing units we are asking to return a form by mail. Many

will already have mailed back their form, but this reminder card

will spur others to do so as soon as possible.

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So those are some of the things that are already in place and

then some things that we anticipate in the next several weeks, all

of which are reasonably large categories of things. I want to put

those things in one pile and the kinds of other problems we deal

with every day, all day long, in a separate pile; they are simply different kinds of things.

We are dealing with the small issues as best we can as we go.

They are the ones that stir the press reports, but they are not of

the sort that are putting the census at risk.

You asked in your letter of invitation about the status of hiring

goals. Hiring continues to progress well. All hiring goals for the update/leave operation have been met; that is, we now have 73,000

people out there doing the job. Our goal is to have a qualified applicant approval of 2.4 million individuals, and as of today, or as of

Friday when we collected these data, we had recruited over 1.8 million qualified applicants, 74 percent of those who are needed, and

slightly ahead of our goal from March 1, which is 70 percent.

Of course, not every office is on target, and for these, we take

special steps. These steps range in intensity based upon where a

local Census office is in relation to the goal. If an office is below,

but near the goal, for example, we increase the recruiting staff, distribute fliers, use targeted postcard mailings or seek help from our

partners. If an office is at less than 75 percent of the goal, we intensify the activities, including things like neighborhood blitzes,

making special appeals to community-based organizations, and

bringing in outside expertise with respect to recruitment. As a last

resort, we are prepared to raise wages to assure an adequate pool

of workers.

Of course, we concentrate these efforts depending upon the task

at hand and, thus, first made certain that the local Census offices

with heavy update/leave operations had sufficient staff. They did

and do in every case. Now, of course, our attention turns to nonresponse followup due to start April 19th.

Given the time available, the fact that we are front loading, and

the capacity to take extraordinary steps if necessary, being able to

staff the Census operations is not what is currently keeping me

awake at night; other things are, but that is not.

You asked us to address the status of data capture systems, including recent test results and the subsequent migration to the

‘‘two pass’’ system. The Census Bureau recently completed the final

operations test and dry run according to plan in a preproduction

operations test at all four sites.

During the operations test and dry run in two of our sites, we

learned that key data required for many write-in items and some

check-box entries was taking longer than originally estimated.

Based on these test results, we have implemented a two-pass processing system. In the first pass, we will capture the 100 percent

data that is asked of everyone and some of which is necessary to

provide the constitutionally mandated apportionment numbers to

the President. In the second pass, we will capture the sample data

from the long forms.

This approach ensures that we will meet all processing deadlines

and provides us with some staffing contingency. The decision has

no impact on the schedule for the release of information for apporVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 10, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66613 HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tionment and redistricting, and only minimal impact on the release

of sample data.

During the four-site test, staff introduced and successfully tested

the first pass of the ‘‘two pass’’ software for the 100 percent data

items. And we are developing the testing schedule for the second

pass.

You asked about any difficulties in confronting local or regional

Census offices. All local Census offices and regional offices are

functioning, that was my report 10 minutes ago. There could have

been a fire in the last 10 minutes, there could have been a flood;

you don’t know; 520 is a large number of entities, something happens to one of them almost every day. But as of right now, they

are all up and functioning.

We are working closely with GAO, where we have specific problems, like the water problem in the New York city office. But the

key thing is they are there. They all have their telephone installations, and they are handing calls on schedule.

You asked about preparation issues concerning Internet response

to census 2000 short form questionnaires. Internet data collection

and questionnaire assistance began on March 3rd. For the first

time, the Census Bureau is providing questionnaire assistance over

the Internet and the option of answering the short form questionnaire via the Internet. The questionnaire assistance effort provides

on-line help to respondents who need help in completing either a

traditional paper questionnaire or the web-based Internet short

form, as well as providing answers to frequently asked questions

about census 2000.

Of course, the Internet data collection option allows respondents

to answer an English language version of the short form questionnaire over a special secure Internet website, if they can provide a

valid housing unit identification number from the paper questionnaire.

Indeed, using the bar code from my correctly delivered advance

letter, I completed my form the other night in less than 3 minutes

on the Internet. Internet data collection will operate until April 15,

2000. The questionnaire assistance part of the operations will end

the first week of June.

You asked about the status of and issues concerning questionnaire assistance centers and ‘‘Be-Counted’’ questionnaire sites. Our

partnership staff are working with community groups, business

leaders and local government officials to identify the Be-Counted

sites appropriate to each community. Staff have confirmed over

15,000 sites at these locations, which will operate from March 31

to April 11. People who believe they did not receive a census form,

believe they were not included on the census questionnaire returned by their household, or have no usual address on census day

will be able to pick up a Be-Counted questionnaire.

The staff have also identified over 27,000 questionnaire assistance centers, which will operate from today through mid-April and

will provide assistance to individuals who might have difficulty

completing the questionnaire because of language or other barriers.

Sites include, but are not limited to, community and civic centers,

banks, libraries, schools, grocery stores, health centers, and places

of worship.

24

We have selected and trained paid clerks, and we are seeking additional volunteers. We use our paid clerks based on their ability

to provide appropriate language or literacy assistance in communities that need this type of support. All individuals providing assistance at questionnaire assistance centers, whether paid or voluntary, have been sworn to protect the confidentiality of individual

information on the questionnaires.

The Census Bureau was selective in training staff to serve as BeCounted clerks in the local Census offices. These clerks will conduct advance visits to all sites to ensure their suitability, set up the

sites, resupply forms as necessary and close down the sites at the

end of the operation.

Unlike questionnaire assistance centers, the Be-Counted sites

are not staffed. They simply are places where people can pick up

a form and mail it back.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I repeat at this point, 24 days from

census day, I am aware of no serious problem that would put the

census at risk. The next month is crucial. I cannot promise you

that serious problems will not occur; I can only promise to keep you

informed. The timing was just right.

Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. We are going to recess around 2.

Your statement just outlines how complex and huge an undertaking the decennial census is. It is impressive that you and the people at the Census Bureau are able to pull it all together as we get

close to the official census date.

But to begin with, I mentioned in my opening statement this

question of access. This has been a concern and problem from day

1, since I got involved over 2 years ago, with the formation of this

committee, and we have talked about it. I brought it up last week

in Appropriations with Secretary Daily.

As we begin to approach some very critical parts of the whole

census over these next several months, I think we need to make

sure we have complete access to the information that is needed to

do what is lawfully required of our oversight responsibilities. We

are talking about $7 billion of taxpayers’ money and something

that obviously has a major impact on this whole country for the

next decade.

I come from the private sector. I was never in government before,

and I used this analogy sometimes of being the auditor. I see these

reports coming out of here on guidelines that the Bureau is giving

us, and to me, if I was a private auditor and doing this in the private sector, I would quit the job. It would not be even acceptable.

It would be totally unacceptable under any CPA guidelines.

I think it is almost arrogant the way this is written, because it

is telling us and the other oversight agencies of government, which

include the Inspector General—and I haven’t really talked directly

with the Inspector General Office, the Census Monitoring Board,

the General Accounting Office—what we can and can’t do. And I

thought we were the elected Representatives of government.

I know you are appointed by the President, but we do have legal responsibility for oversight; and we also, because of the $7 billion,

have a responsibility to see that. The Monitoring Board was created in cooperation with the President to have the responsibility,

and as you know, we are talking about maybe 40 some people,

total, in all four agencies that are going to be involved in the census issue. And we are talking about 520 offices and hundreds of

thousands of employees at the Bureau.

So I am concerned about the access. I am concerned about the

delaying tactics that have been used over the past year or so—and

I know there are Commerce Department political operatives that

kind of hold things up. We always get different excuses. This can’t

continue, and when we get into the critical time in the summer, it

is going to be important that we have access.

Let me give you one illustration. One of things that people talk

about, and I don’t believe this is true, but I am saying this comes

out, is that there is going to be an interest in not being successful

with the full enumeration so we have to use adjustment. I think

you are too professional and so is the Bureau, but there are those

that say they are going to not do a very good job in the enumeration so we have to do an adjusted census. And the problem is, when

you get to closeout, I think it was 16 weeks in 1990, you are going

to do it in 10 weeks and you will have an extra 10 million people

to do it. You can close out in 10 weeks, just the quality of data may

be not that good; you might or might not know that.

34

The question is, with our oversight responsibility, we want to

make sure, for example, that when we do a closeout, it is done

right. If we have to give 2 weeks’ notice in every case because you

require it, how can we do the oversight? Should we just, say, trust

you with $7 billion?

I am concerned. The General Accounting Office has spoken to me

about it. The person, in fact, who was going to be testifying next

week will raise the question. He has never had this type of experience in his 17 years in the General Accounting Office. So I think

we need to have it clarified, what we can and can’t do. We certainly

don’t want to interfere with what is operating.

But some of these—for example, you have to have a regional director or an assistant regional Census manager accompanying anybody that shows up at an office? You are going to waste everybody’s

valuable time when somebody wants to stop in to see you.

I think you have created a bureaucratic mess with these rules

and regulations. I think you should be open. If you want to be

transparent, you need to make it available. Sometimes it takes us

weeks to get information. So we are going to have a hearing on it

in a couple of weeks.

I would also like to recommend that you or someone senior in the

decennial census have a meeting with all four agencies involved,

which would include the Monitoring Board, the Inspector General,

and GAO to make sure that we all understand and can work this

out.

And now you may please respond.

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you.

The closeout process for the moment, I would like to address

those. But I will not make those direct. Let’s talk first about

the——

Mr. MILLER. I am just using that as an illustration.

Mr. PREWITT. Let us talk first about it. I am only going to mention that because some of the facts you used about 1990 were not

exactly correct. I would like to make the record right, but I would

like to address the access issue as best I can in a few moments.

Since I became Director in late October, there have been approximately 10—depending on how you count, 10 or so major GAO reports. And I happen to have most of them here with me, and in

not a single one of those reports, Chairman Miller, is there any expression of concern about the cooperation of the Census Bureau.

It has never been put in a report. Indeed, based on my experiences, perhaps, the most intense and detailed investigation of the

Census Bureau in its history was in August of last year, when we

were in the middle of trying to put our operations together—as you

know, I had to write you about it. I was so concerned about the

amount of time it was taking of our senior management. If the

GAO investigation continued at that level, it could indeed put the

census at risk.

But speaking of cooperation, let me read you a sentence from

that report.

We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Commerce for comment.

As requested, the Director of the Bureau of the Census provided written comments

on behalf of the Department in 2 days. This was a thick report. We appreciate the

Bureau’s rapid response to the draft and its overall cooperation and timely response

to our data requests.

35

In this entire stack of reports, that is the only place at which the

GAO addressed the issue of cooperativeness with its agencies and

investigations. And it was a completely positive statement, not a

negative statement. Yet now we are told by the same agency that

we have an unusually poor record of cooperation.

Let me say one other thing about this report. They focus on preparations, as they should have, in the period leading up to the census; not a single one of them alerts us to an area in which, in fact,

we are ill prepared, that is, how to simultaneously do a census and

explain what we are doing in real-time to our oversight agencies.

We have a huge number of requests for site visits in the next 3

weeks. The Monitoring Board is only one of them. The GAO reports

have never said to us over the last 2 years, ‘‘Look, you better put

in some extra staff just to deal with the oversight apparatus.’’

So if their intent was to help us prepare for the census, the one

thing they did not help us prepare for and didn’t even ever address

was the question of how can you staff up in the middle of a census

for all of the oversight apparatus that is going to come your way?

I would have loved it if they would have given us some kind of an

advance warning on this.

Let us not talk just about the past. I would like to tell you what

GAO has asked for and what we are providing.

GAO has asked for our cost and progress system, which reports

on 55 operations at every level of geography and operations. This

includes, for example, the number of persons recruited, the number

of persons hired for each operation by their preemployment status—employed, retired, including target recruitment pools, such as

Welfare to Work beneficiaries, persons under special waivers for

noncitizens, Federal assistance annuitants, current Federal employees, recipients of public housing assistance and any other waivers that may become available to the Bureau, the number of employees quitting, resigning, terminated, involuntarily separated, et

cetera, actual staff turnover rates, number of applicants in various

stages of hiring, and so forth. That is just under labor force participation.

Then in our production system, this cost and progress data includes total case load assumptions for each and every questionnaire

delivery operation, that is, update/leave, list/enumerate, update/

enumerate, urban update/leave, et cetera, number of possible

mailback responses for all questionnaire deliveries, separate accounts for the number of mailout undeliverables, initial total case

load for nonresponse followup, subsequent estimate of total

NRFU—nonresponse followup—case load, incorporating late

mailback responses, number of hours worked, training hours, overtime hours, total earnings, number of employees receiving——

Mr. MILLER. Excuse me. There is no question there are lots of

requests. You don’t need to read every single item, we don’t have

time. I understand.

Mr. PREWITT. I mean, I just started with this one.

Mr. MILLER. You are welcome to do that, but I will tell you, then

we don’t have—should you decide what oversight we should have?

Mr. PREWITT. No, sir. I will turn to that question. I would like

to answer that question.

36

The data that they have requested, and that we are providing we

are providing in real-time, is a terabyte of information, a terabyte.

It is hard to know what a terabyte is if you can’t visualize it. It

is the equivalent of 16,000 CD-ROMs, or if the imagination is still

focused on a paper record, this is the Yellow Pages of the Washington, DC. A terabyte is not 50 of these or 500 of these or 5 million

of these, a terabyte is 50 million of these. That is how much information we are giving to GAO.

Now, if providing in real-time the equivalent of 50 million phone

books, or 16,000 CD-ROMs, is being uncooperative, I would hate to

think what the more cooperative agencies are providing to the

GAO.

But now let me address your straight question, whose job is it

to decide what oversight is? It is not mine. It is certainly yours; it

is the U.S. Congress’. I appreciate that. Obviously, the Congress

needs this information to discharge its oversight responsibilities,

that is, the terabyte of information in real-time over the next 10

weeks.

But I have to pose the question to you, do you need it in realtime on the assumption that somehow the census can actually be

managed on a daily basis by the U.S. Congress? For example, in

your opening comment——

Mr. MILLER. I am well past my 5 minutes. I have gone over 10

minutes.

Mr. PREWITT. With permission, I said you addressed this at some

length——

Mr. MILLER. Right, right.

Mr. PREWITT [continuing]. In your opening comment. You addressed the error on the address letter. Now, do you want to know

about that in real-time in order to fix it? Because it can’t happen

that way. You can’t fix problems with a GAO process. You can’t

manage the census that way.

You can exercise oversight. You can exercise whether we have

committed fraud or inefficiencies or corruption, mismanagement of

funds. But it is very hard for me to imagine why you need a

terabyte of information in real-time. We are providing it, at some

extra costs to us, to get it all to you on time and to the GAO.

Mr. MILLER. Our responsibility is concerning fraud. I mean——

Mr. PREWITT. No, no. I am just saying that if the GAO’s task is

to see if we have appropriately spent the taxpayer dollars, they will

be able to do that, because all of this information is available. You

know, Mr. Chairman, you said very wisely—I thought very wisely,

as a matter of fact—some time ago that perhaps the job that I now

hold is the job for a general. And I took it seriously; I seriously did.

And I often reflected on that comment and asked myself, what

would General Schwarzkopf do under these circumstances? If the

GAO were to do a real-time audit of Desert Storm, to what purpose

would that have been done?

Let us say there was an auditor of an armed vehicle being positioned on the Iraqi/Kuwait border, and the GAO auditor/judge or

the operator of that vehicle did not make a competent reading of

the GPS data; and so the auditor then said to this operator, ‘‘Look,

I don’t think you are putting this vehicle in the right place.’’

37

The operator knows it is in the right place because he understands the larger strategy that is going on. He now has the following choice, he has to stop and explain.

Mr. MILLER. That is a crazy analogy you are using, to say that

we are—you know, it is like going to—I will tell you what, we are

using an awful lot of time. We just have a problem here.

If it is real or perceived, it is a problem. If you want a transparent census, we need to feel that the people who have oversight

responsibility, all four agencies of the government, have access.

That is all we are asking, and so—— Mr. PREWITT. Sir, a terabyte of information strikes me as a lot

of transparency.

Mr. MILLER. I am telling you, a lot of people are complaining to

me, and I am listening to the complaints from all the agencies. I

haven’t talked to the Inspector General, but the other ones, they

are saying there is a problem. We are going to have this hearing.

I hope you will meet with everybody and see if there is a better

way to open up, because we are going to go through some critical

times these next months if we are going to be obstructing and delaying—I mean, what the GAO is saying; you know, you have information, and then it takes weeks to still get it.

Why are we—and I think it is just billed unnecessarily—your

staffs have built unnecessary barriers here; and it ultimately goes

down to the Commerce Department, it sounds like, and then the

politicians get involved. Anyway, we just need to avoid this problem.

I will guarantee you—and Mrs. Maloney will come up and defend

you here in a minute. I will tell you Mr. Waxman and Mr. Dingell

would not have tolerated one bit of this when they were chairmen.

Mr. PREWITT. We have to understand what 50 million phone

books full of data means if that is not—in real-time, if that is not

transparency, it is hard for me to imagine what is transparency.

You, for example, quoted the fact that the Monitoring Board says

that we have 30 outstanding requests. That is not our understanding. We have two outstanding requests. We get requests from the

Monitoring Board on a constant-flow basis. There is always some

outstanding by definition. I don’t know where that 30 comes from.

Mr. MILLER. Actually, we will submit this for the record. This is

something that they gave me. These are not the only outstanding

ones. These are all the delays it takes to get information, and it

varies—refused data requests and such. We have a problem. And

are you denying there is a problem? I am just telling you, this is

going to affect the respect for the census when we get through this

process; and unless we feel we have access to this information, everyone is going to be suspect of it.

And I really—this really upset me when I read this document,

the arrogance of it, to say we cannot ever, unless we have 2 weeks’ notice; I have never had any agency tell Congress—I mean, this is

only my 8th year, and I don’t do much oversight, but I never had

anyone tell me that I have to give 2 weeks. There isn’t reason why

you shouldn’t. We should try in every effort. But here it says it is

absolutely that way.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. I just——

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Mr. PREWITT. I apologize if the language was arrogant. My recollection of that letter is that we sent it as early as we could to try

to create some sort of systematic way to accommodate all of the requests that we are getting for site visits, which is a large number

of requests. The GAO—the Monitoring Board letter in the next 20

days has, as we know—— Mr. MILLER. You are going to have to fly in a regional director

to every one of those 1-hour visits, I guess; that is what your policy

is. That is a waste of your time and effort, it sounds to me. That

is what you are saying: You will either have the regional director

or the assistant regional Census manager accompanying. It is all

of these people. They are 1-hour visits. That is a waste of your efficiency, I think.

Mr. PREWITT. We don’t know what the visits are. We know that

in the past the people who have been asking us for visits, we have

had to stop the operation. We have had to set up training systems.

We have to do things, sir. We are actually doing the census now.

We are actually in the middle of it. As I just said—— Mr. MILLER. We have gone a little bit longer. I apologize for the

time.

Let me just ask you. We are going to have other people besides

these agencies testifying and find out more background on this and

what the legal requirements are so we have it clarified. But will

you arrange for a meeting with the four different agencies involved,

so they are all in the room together—maybe you have done this— and see if we can get it cleared up so that everybody feels that this

is going to be a transparent census?

You want a transparent census, I want a transparent census;

and let us see if we can get a better working relationship.

Mr. PREWITT. I would be absolutely delighted. I requested that

meeting. I requested that meeting some time ago from both chairmen of the Monitoring Board. I never got an answer to that letter.

I wrote you a letter in August, saying I was worried about this situation, and asked for a meeting. I did not get a response to that

letter. So we very much would welcome that meeting.

Mr. MILLER. Let us jointly write a letter to them all—— Mr. PREWITT. Good, good.

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. And say, let us have this meeting. I

mean, the minority and majority sides should be involved. Both

sides on the Monitoring Board should be involved, because this perception is going to get more of a problem. It may not be that real,

but I think it is a real perception.

Mrs. Maloney, I apologize for taking so much time.

Mrs. MALONEY. It seems to me that as the Director is designing

and implementing the most difficult part of the census, he is not

being criticized for the task of running an appropriate and thorough census; he is being criticized for not answering all of the questions about the job that everybody seems to say he is doing all

right and doing well.

And I just would like your cutoff, and I would like to hear more

about all of these requests that you are getting to answer questions. Just to mention some that I am aware of, because I read the

reports—the GAO, very thoroughly questioning; the Monitoring

Board, they want 31 visits, what, in 2 weeks, 31 visits.

39

We weren’t notified, but 31 visits they want, this subcommittee— I see him regularly, every week at least at a subcommittee meeting, it seems like—the National Academy of Sciences and all of

their committees, and the advisory committees that you have set

up, certainly the IGs from the Commerce Department to name a

few.

But you were cutoff when you were going through all of these requests. And I would like to hear all of these requests that you are

getting to provide information on your job. Sometimes, do you

think, possibly they are trying to obstruct your ability to do your

job by demanding you to spend the majority of your time answering

questions about your job?

And I would like to ask about reinventing government. I know

that the Vice President—and I supported his efforts—went out

with a very aggressive campaign to cut back on the number of people in government. We now have the smallest government we have

ever had, and possibly we might look at a new form of structuring

your office where you have a whole unit that does nothing but answer questions.

Now, I must tell you some people think the census is you go out

and print a form at a Xerox place. You and I know, Dan, this is

highly complicated; I spend a lot of my time answering questions

to my colleagues in Congress. The census is an important system.

It is an important goal, and it is complicated.

So I would really like you to put in the record and go through

everybody who is requesting all of this information. And I would

also like a report from you—I don’t want to ask for more paperwork, but I would like an estimate of how much of your time and

your major senior staff time has to go in to answering questions.

We know many people work for the Census Bureau, Dan, but

only people in supervisory positions can answer some of these questions, and so I would like a sense of how much of their time—and

is this constant demand for information impeding their ability to

get—as you said, as Dan said, we all say—the most comprehensive,

largest peacetime effort and mobilization ever in our country, the

greatest civic responsibility of every citizen to be involved.

And I know that I see the outreach in my own community with

the Census bus and forms and everything else and my own mail

that came to me over the weekend. And I did an informal survey,

all of my staff and a lot of my friends got the form, so it seems like

the operations are moving forward. People aren’t criticizing the operations moving forward, but what we appear to hear is a complaint that so many different entities are asking questions, they

aren’t getting all of their detailed questions answered, some of

which may be repetitive and some of which may impede the ability

to do their job.

If all I had to do—if I had to respond every day to the GAO,

Monitoring Board, IGs, and not to mention every politician, including myself, and yourself, who are constantly asking questions, we

couldn’t get our job done.

So I would like to hear in the record how many different groups

are asking for information, how much information it is, do you

have the staff to respond to all of these questions. And I would just

like to give you as much time as you need to explain what all of

40

these requests are doing to your time and your ability to oversee

a very important function of the Federal Government.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, Congresswoman Maloney. If you will permit

me, I will start with an anecdote that came to mind as I was listening to Chairman Miller’s opening comment. Norman Bourlaug, who

got a Nobel Prize—he was an agronomist who was based at a research station in Mexico during the Green Revolution; Norman

Bourlaug was a very, very important scientist with respect to corn

breeding. And the headquarters used to send him requests all the

time for information; and Norman Bourlaug finally got frustrated

and cabled back—that was in the day of cables, in the 1950’s—‘‘Did

you send me down here to grow paper or to grow corn?’’ I sometimes feel as if I had been sent to the Census Bureau to

produce reports, not to produce a census. And I am very anxious

about that, because we are in the middle of it now, and I want to

produce a census for this country, not just produce endless reports

and site visits.

Now, that is not an attack on oversight responsibilities. That is

simply a question of, is the oversight process supposed to do realtime auditing and, if so, is that because the oversight process can

somehow manage the census?

By the time the auditors finish the work, come back, write a report, give it to us for comments, we then comment, and it comes

down here. And then you have a hearing to tell me that we should

have done something differently in our recruitment system, it is too

late. We have already fixed that problem. If we didn’t fix it, we

were in trouble. We are fixing problems all day long, every day.

One of the problems you asked about is how much time. I would

estimate that in terms of our senior management time when we get

together to talk two or three times a week about where we are,

what the issues are, half of our time—and this is sort of 9 or 10

people—half of our time is spent in conversations about how to be

responsive to the GAO, the IG, the subcommittee, the National

Academy, the advisory committees—at least half of our time is

spent on those issues. That is a lot when you are actually doing a

census.

Regarding your offer to put into the record the actual documentation of the requests, let me assemble that systematically, and I will

provide that for the record.

Mrs. MALONEY. Would you like to elaborate on all of the requests

that come into your office? I would just like to hear about it. What

is your day like? Do you go in there, you go to work and you get

a call that you need another report done?

I would like you to elaborate on all of these requests that are

coming in.

Mr. PREWITT. Surely.

I would say about a third of the day, a normal day—there is no

such thing as a normal day when you are actually doing the census, about a third of the day are these brushfire problems. For example, there are large numbers of Members of the U.S. Congress

who are concerned about whether they have enough of something— enough offices, enough advertising, enough recruitment, enough

jobs, enough something in their districts. So the phone bank and

the letters will be coming in from Members of Congress, and that

41

is quite separate from official oversight. That is one-on-one stuff.

It is very time-consuming, very time-consuming.

We tried to be very responsive to Congressman Ryan on one

issue that was in terms of senior personnel time, including myself,

other senior people, regional directors; I would say the total manhours that went into that letter could easily have been 40, 50

hours. That was one constituent asking one question, which turned

out to be misframed; he wrote: ‘‘I lost 6 weeks of salary.’’ It turns

out 6 weeks ago, he lost 1 week of salary, which was made up the

next week.

We get those all the time. We have to do as best we can and respond to them. So let us say that is about a third of the day, brush

fires, not just congressional, all the other brush fires, they are

going out all over the country all the time, all of these small things

that come and go.

Then I would say about a third of the day is spent with the official oversight process, one way or the other, either getting materials ready for a hearing, getting materials ready for a report, having conversations about what we ought to be doing and not be

doing, how do we handle—for example, let me give you an example

we just dealt with yesterday.

There are requests for the—all of the complete count committees.

There are about 9,000 complete count committees. The complete

count committees are not ours. They are established by local mayors and local Governors. They are not Census Bureau complete

count committees.

By what authority do I share the list, with the contact name, of

these 9,000 committees to somebody who just asked me? I don’t

know what the mailing is going to be to those people. They didn’t

join up to be visited by the GAO or the IG; they joined up to try

to do a census. Nevertheless, we spent 11⁄2 hours struggling with

that issue just yesterday.

So there is about a third of the day that goes into that kind of

problem. And then I would think about a third of the day actually

goes into trying to manage the census, trying to deal with the local

Census offices that don’t have—their recruitment is below target.

What are we going to do in those offices? Do we move people and

so forth.

So I would say that on a normal day close to a third of our time

is spent with the oversight apparatus, and it comes from a large

number of sources; and that is different from individual congressional requests, because I don’t think we put that in the same category. These are just questions that are being raised by Members

of Congress, and by mayors; I put that in there too.

The exciting thing about this census, and it is really very exciting—I am very pleased to be here, quite honestly—a lot of people

think they own this census, a lot of people, thousands of people, our

partners, our mayors, our Governors, Members of Congress, all

think that they now sort of own this census. That is very healthy

for the society.

We are very excited to be running that kind of census. When you

share ownership, it creates lots of pressures on you. So that is what

it is. I will be happy to provide that more systematically.

42

Mr. MILLER. We can do a couple of rounds. Let me recognize Mr.

Ryan. We will come back and do a couple of rounds, if that is all

right.

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. Actually, I was coming prepared to defend you today,

till I heard that one. Let me——

Mr. PREWITT. You are an honest man, Mr. Ryan. That won’t

deter you at all.

Mr. RYAN. Let’s clarify what happened in Racine, WI.

When a senior management person at your local Census office in

my district of Racine, WI, tells me that many employees aren’t getting their paychecks, and he sends me a letter to that effect, and

he is an official of the Census Bureau, I think that is a very serious

claim, and—I think that is a very serious thing. I’m sorry it took

you 50 man-hours to figure that out. I don’t know how long it takes

you to figure those things out, but that was a very legitimate question.

Mr. PREWITT. Surely. We took it legitimately.

Mr. RYAN. I would like to use a military anecdote if I may for

a second.

I had the pleasure and opportunity to have breakfast with Colin

Powell not too long ago, with a handful of other Members of Congress, and he laid out for us what he calls the ‘‘Powell doctrine.’’

The Powell doctrine, basically the lessons we learned from the Vietnam War, is that politicians were running the war, picking the

bombing targets, and we had the whole policy of incrementalism—

the wrong way to do that.

What we learned in the Gulf war under the Powell doctrine was,

let the experts do it, let the experts run the war, let the military

experts who know how to do their jobs do those jobs.

I think that is an appropriate anecdote for this situation. And I

really sympathize with what you are doing, and I think you are the

right person for the job.

But also we are all concerned about the census. Everybody believes we have ownership in the census. This is the greatest nonmilitary civic exercise we ever engage in here, so oversight is critical; oversight is very important, and it is a congressional responsibility to have oversight.

When we are told by members of the Census Bureau that paychecks aren’t getting mailed out, whether that is true or not, we

have to react and do oversight on those things, because it is just

around the corner. When we have calls and we are finding out that

we don’t have enough people—in Wisconsin, we have a very tight

labor market; we need more people to fill out the applications so

that we can get the enumerators out there when that happens. We

are concerned about that. I have been on TV for 3 weeks at home

telling people, ‘‘Call, call, call, call, please, we need applications.’’

Which leads me to my question, I have here the letter I got in

the mail about the census. And it is a letter from you saying we

need help hiring temporary workers throughout the United States

to help complete the census, call the local Census office near you

for more information, the phone number is available from the directory assistance or on the Internet, and then it lists your website.

43

I just wanted to ask you—and the complaint I have been getting

is; I am sure you have thought this through—I want to see, why

didn’t you just put your 800 number in there instead of asking people to dial up and pay 75 cents for directory assistance.

I have been given your 800 number, I don’t know it by heart, I

thought I did, but I have been giving your 800 number all over the

place. Why didn’t you just throw the 800 number there, which is

a national number? It doesn’t matter where you are, you can call

it, and then they route you to your local Census office so you can

get the information on how you fill out that application.

That extra expense and extra required action, I am fearful is

going to delay people or just stop people from actually inquiring.

Mr. PREWITT. No. Congressman Ryan, that is a completely legitimate question. And I didn’t—by the way, if I can return to the first

part, I thought your question was legitimate; that is why we took

it so seriously. But sometimes those questions actually are stimulated by a pretty little thing. The way it got to you, it made it

sound like a much bigger problem than it turned out to be. We

both found out that.

I don’t think the question was inappropriate. I was simply using

that as a way to suggest the day is full of those kinds of things,

which, when we look hard at them, they turn out not to amount

to quite as much as what it appears.

Mr. RYAN. It is just a helpful suggestion, maybe you don’t need

to have a manager for all of these site visits. I just actually popped

into the local Census office and just walked around and talked to

people, asked them how things were going.

When you responded to my question about this particular instance, you sent four people from your Chicago office to drive up— to take half a day to meet me in my Racine office, when all you

could have done is just given me a call and said, ‘‘Here is what has

happened; it has been taken care of.’’ That took 4 of your manhours for your regional people driving up from Chicago to Racine,

WI, to explain that everything is OK.

It was a nice meeting, but I thought it was kind of a waste of

time. So I hope you can consider—maybe you can do this in a little

faster, timely manner.

Mr. PREWITT. We do take requests from members of the subcommittee very seriously.

To your other question, I think it is a fair question, the phone

number question. Before you got in the room, I did mention that

after the advance letter went out, we were getting on that website,

we were getting about 1,000—100,000 hits a week—excuse me,

100,000 hits a day, and it jumped to 1 million the next day. So it

really has worked.

I honestly do not have a good explanation for your question. Did

we have the number at that time? I think we simply didn’t have

the number when that letter was being—— Mr. RYAN. The 800 number?

Mr. PREWITT. Right. We have now got that number everywhere

where we can have it; it is 1–888–325–7733. If everyone is listening

and they want a census job, that is the number, 1–888–325–7733.

I think we simply did not have it. We did not want to route them

directly to local offices, because you can’t do that in a letter very

44

well because this is a mass mailing. I think that is the simple explanation.

Mr. RYAN. When you went to print, you didn’t have the 800 number?

Mr. PREWITT. That is correct.

[The information referred to follows:]

45

46

Mr. RYAN. OK. I think we have a vote, so I will just yield back

my time.

Mr. MILLER. OK. We will take a recess. We have three votes. I

am guessing we will be back in 20 minutes or so. We will stand

in recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. MILLER. We will have the committee reconvene.

Mrs. Maloney is on her way back, but rather than taking up

time, let us go ahead and continue. I have some more questions.

Also in our audience here today is Dr. Barbara Bryant, one of

your predecessors, who was sitting in the exact seat exactly 10

years ago. That was before my time involved in Congress.

So we are glad you could come as an observer. She has testified

as a witness before, since we had the subcommittee recreated.

Let me switch over to the subject of the prenotification letter

which we talked about and get some more clarification. There are

two problems with—the single-digit problem. And the other problem—and we are get getting calls into office—is this issue about— I think there was in an article in the Washington Post that said

they wish you had put in an extra sentence in English on the bottom of the letter. My neighbor next door back in Bradenton called

me before I flew back up here yesterday, ‘‘What is this about?’’ People are confused about the envelope.

So, again, I don’t think it is going to affect the end result. But

it is just a perception problem again.

Before you came on board, we had a debate on the issue of the

second mailing, which—I mean, that was a decision before your arrival here that was tested in the dress rehearsal. It showed, I

think, a 7 to 15 percent increase in response. But the decision was

made. We had expressed our opinion that it should go through the

second mailing, because this prenotification was going to solve the

problem.

Was that ever pretested, the prenotification, as comparable to

the second questionnaire? Do you know?

Mr. PREWITT. As follows, Mr. Miller—— Mr. MILLER. What kind of response are you expecting the

prenotification will help?

Mr. PREWITT. Exactly. The prenotification letter was pretested

back in the early 1990’s as part of the package; that is, the socalled three mailing package; that is, the prenotification letter,

then the form and then the postcard followup.

And based upon those tests, we estimated that response rate

could be affected by as much as 6 percent. Most of that, it turns

out, is attributable to the postcard reminder. You get the biggest

bump from that.

The questionnaire bump has to do with the fact that it is more

user friendly. There is obviously going to be a questionnaire, irrespective, but making a more user-friendly questionnaire, we

thought would increase it. So the prenotification letter, it was our

estimate that it would increase by perhaps as much as 2 percent,

somewhere between 11⁄2 and 2 percent response rate.

Mr. MILLER. That was for the prenotification letter 11⁄2 to 2 percent?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes.

47

Mr. MILLER. How about the post-questionnaire card, as a postcard?

Mr. PREWITT. The postcard, which is basically a thank-you reminder, we estimated could be as high as 3 percent. So the total

package was a 6 percent bump in response rate. Indeed, at that

time we were estimating the response rate to be about 55 percent

based upon our modeling of the demography and other response

rates. And it was that combination of three things, a) notification

letter, b) a user-friendly questionnaire, and c) a reminder postcard,

that moved us from 55 to 61 percent.

Mr. MILLER. This single-digit problem, it doesn’t sound too big

because it is a single digit, except for 120 times. The problem is

really a quality check problem, I think. How did this stage—can

you explain how the quality check did not work and what other

quality checks are in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

The quality check process worked right. The flaw was the specification in the quality process.

Here is what happened: We ran our test deck on the advance letter. And it tested out exactly correctly; that is, all features of the

test letter tested out, including the address and so forth. Sometime

between that test deck and the production run, we were still negotiating about some of the language text.

We were in very active conversation with our advisory committee

with respect to language. And under their urging, we made some

modifications in the language. What that meant is, you opened up

the software. Now the software that got opened up was simply the

text file software, not the address software, so we presumed. And

so, after the software was closed and the production run started,

we then focused upon those things which we thought might have

changed, i.e., if there was any problem in the language translation.

The other thing we focused on, we actually do approximately 200

cases every 4 hours of all of our production runs, and we pull those

cases out, batches of them, send them to Jeffersonville, and they

run through separate quality control processes.

The quality control processes in Jeffersonville were focused exclusively on the parts of the address which were operational. We were

very concerned that the bar code matched front and back, and that

the bar code that we had matched the address that the Post Office

had as its mailing address. All of those things tested out perfectly.

And the mistake in our quality check is that there simply wasn’t

a provision in the quality check to go back and look at something

which was not operational, except for the language part. We went

back and relooked at all the language part to make sure it was all

right.

And it was simply—it wasn’t a failure of the quality control. It

was a failure of the prespecification, not to respect that particular

data field.

Mr. MILLER. But it was basically a failure in designing the quality check then?

Mr. PREWITT. In that sense, yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. Right. Because there should have been another

quality check that caught that.

Mr. PREWITT. Of that field.

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Mr. MILLER. That is where the problem—— Mr. PREWITT. It was a specification rather than a failure of the

process itself. The process worked the way it was specified.

Mr. MILLER. The specifications were wrong.

Mrs. Maloney, we went ahead and started, knowing you were

right on your way.

On this same issue, let me go over my time and we will even it

out here, this question of not putting a sentence at the end of the

letter saying in English what this was on the back side, because

people didn’t know what the envelope was about unless you could

read any of those five languages and such. It was a question of confusion.

I think the Washington Post said the Bureau wishes—admits

they should have done that.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. Go ahead. That was maybe a quality check or focus

group; why couldn’t we have caught that, I wonder.

Mr. PREWITT. That I would ascribe to a judgment error more

than a processing or a quality check error. And I can explain it, but

I don’t intend to try to excuse it.

But the explanation is, quite honestly, that this is the first operation that we have put into the census in 2000, which was not

pretested. And the reason for that is, after the dress rehearsal,

when we realized we could not do a targeted mailing to different

language groups, we converted the advance letter from simply a

prenotification letter to carry the second burden of also being the

mechanism by which you got the language form. So it took on a

second task.

And our attention on making sure it worked well for that task

was so intense and focused that, quite honestly, we lost sight of the

fact that it had a different task, which is the 80 percent of the

American population that doesn’t speak one of these five languages, or the 90 percent or whatever.

So we were extremely focused upon the language dimension of

that letter, and so that is why I say it was a judgment error. The

letter was printed exactly the way we spec’d out. There is no problem in the letter itself.

In retrospect, it certainly should have included a sentence which

said the envelope is for the people who want a language form. The

concern at that time—these letters are examined and talked about

and argued in focus groups and so forth, and the concern at that

time was, let us keep this letter as—again, as clean as possible

with respect to its task. And I think if we had pretested it, we

would have gotten some of the response that we have now gotten

with respect to the confusion, and we would have then changed it.

But it was an operation that because of when it happened—it

happened after the dress rehearsal, and there simply was no time

to pretest it. I learned from that—and we had this conversation

last summer when we were talking about additional operations. I

learned from that that we simply should not put something in unless it is absolutely mandatory because the census is at risk. We

should not put in operations which we have been unable to field

test because that is the way mistakes get made in a process like

this.

49

It was an error in judgment, not in process. It is again regrettable. I think the only sort of saving grace or—not saving grace,

but the thing I would mention—we are trying to track as best we

can the kind of current attitudes of the public with respect to the

census. And we ran a survey, or some partners on behalf of the

Census Bureau ran a survey, over the weekend just as the letter

was coming out. The level of awareness is very high, 89 percent of

the American public is saying they are aware of the census, and

that is unprecedented at this stage in the census.

Eighty-four percent can actually describe some of the features of

a census. It is not only just general awareness, it is very, very high.

And when you ask the people, are they going to cooperate, those

numbers are very, very high. That doesn’t mean it will happen, but

at least it is very encouraging.

We have reason to believe—look, I make no excuse. I don’t want

to sound like I am. On the other hand, the number of calls that

we have gotten and e-mail is well, well under a percent. Almost

any mass mailing generates at least 1 percent of people that don’t

like it for one reason or another. So we don’t yet see this as serious.

Mr. MILLER. Do you log in—we are getting calls in the office. It

is not large numbers, but other Members are calling us about it.

Mr. PREWITT. Surely.

Mr. MILLER. But do you log in the numbers throughout all

the——

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, certainly.

Mr. MILLER. How much—— Mr. PREWITT. I have only logged in central headquarters. Central

headquarters in Suitland. I haven’t logged in—they are certainly

occurring in the region as well. But I would say as of last night

when I checked on this, the central headquarters was easily 200 emails and phone calls. So it could easily get to a million. It could

easily get to a percent.

Whether that will affect the census or not, it is hard to say. The

forms are on their way. Look, some of the forms are already——

Mr. MILLER. It is more of a public relations issue, it is a second

public relations issue on the first big thing. But the advertising has

gone—so that is really the earliest public communication issue.

Mr. PREWITT. And all the partnership work, well over half a million people have already participated in one of the road tour

events.

We have had a series of meetings with ministers lately. The Census Sabbath idea is really catching. We think it will be really big.

It is a public relations embarrassment. I regret it, again, as I did

the digit problem.

But if I really believed that it was going to threaten the census,

I would be doing something, and I simply don’t think it is.

Mr. MILLER. All right.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, could you—what would you recommend to respond to, really, the chairman’s concern that he is

raising over wanting more oversight and more transparent oversight? What would you recommend could be done that is not going

to interfere with the professionals doing their job, but would address his concerns?

50

Mr. PREWITT. Well, I would like to say, both as a citizen, as a

political scientist, and now as a member of the executive branch,

I believe very strongly in the oversight responsibilities of the U.S.

Congress. I have no hesitancy about that.

And I do think if you go back through the GAO reports, if you

go back through your own committee requests, if you even go back

looking at site requests, from subcommittee staff, from Monitoring

Board, to my knowledge, not a single request has not in one way

or the other been acceded to and responded to.

Site visits all took place all through the summer, successfully.

Many of them took a full day, they weren’t 1-hour visits. They took

a full day. We accommodated all of them. We have accommodated

the Monitoring Board fully thus far.

So it is not any kind of a resistance to either site visits or information flows or what have you. I think the concern I have right

now is the real-time nature of it, which is that they need a lot of

stuff right now, and right now is also when we are doing the census.

And so I think my advice to Mr. Miller would be, indeed, the advice he gave to me, which was in effect, I believe, it would be very

effective to have the four key agencies, the subcommittee, the GAO,

the IG and—all of those three especially, and perhaps the NAS

that is less central to this conversation, convene quickly.

For example, I am in a bit of a bind, we actually have already,

we think, worked out with your subcommittee staff requests for

site visits, but we haven’t worked it out yet with the Monitoring

Board.

Indeed, I just had during the break a conversation with Chris

Mihm from the GAO, and he believes that we are practically there

with respect to an understanding of what they need. So there is

some sort of disjuncture between the commentary and the headway

we think we have made.

But I am now in a bind because I think you are right, it will be

very useful to all get in the room together and try to work out a

strategy for the next period. In the meantime, I have a letter from

Mr. Blackwell, who simply rejects our guidelines. Those are guidelines; they are not rules. And I am very sorry if the language appeared to be arrogant, I really do apologize for that, but they were

guidelines to help us do this.

These are guidelines, by the way, that affect only the people actually doing operations. They are not the guidelines for coming to

Suitland. They are not the guidelines for getting data. They are

only guidelines affecting people who are doing something, training

or recruiting or delivering forms or checking in forms.

And I really cannot have those peoples’ schedules disrupted without some sort of warning, some sort of preparation for that. I think

if you brought me back here in 2 or 3 weeks and we were having

a serious operational problem, because we spent so much time dealing with people who needed to be visiting us and oversighting and

so forth, then it would not be a very happy hearing.

So I think my advice, Congresswoman Maloney, is to have the

meeting as quickly as we can, that Congressman Miller recommended, and try to have that in such a way, by the time you

have a hearing on the 23rd, there will be no questions about transVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 10, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66613 HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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parency. Because I really do not think there are questions about

transparency; I think there are questions about whether you can

do a real-time audit of an operation that is as complicated as census 2000.

Mrs. MALONEY. In terms of oversight, Mr. Chairman, I would

like to hear from the Monitoring Board, both sides. What is it they

are looking for and what are they doing? I think it would be appropriate that we not only have the GAO in to report to us and Mr.

Prewitt to report to us, but the Monitoring Board, which we funded

quite generously, if I recall. What are they doing?

What I think is interesting in all of this oversight—and it continues and I believe in oversight—that none of it has focused on any, ‘‘major problem,’’ nor has it found any, ‘‘major problem.’’ It has just

been a review and a report on the census that seems to be going

forward, and in the process that it was supposed to do.

And I would just like to focus on some good news for a while. I

know that last year at about this time we had just had a Supreme

Court ruling; we were in a partisan fight over the funding of the

census. And, quite frankly, now we are in a very positive framework. We have the funding. We have mailings that are going out,

what I received, my staff received, that the advertising campaign

is going forward. I think the new vans are an incredibly positive

addition to the outreach to the community. I think they are very

effective. You could use more of them.

Could you just give us some good news of what is happening at

the Census Bureau? Can you just tell us some good projects that

are happening and some good news about what is happening?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, as you said, the promotional activity is really

very well advanced. I think the number of school kits, for example,

which are out there, about 1.5 million—as I said, about half a million people have already visited the road van tour, that is, visited,

done something, interacted with the van, not just seen it.

I just shared with you some survey data, where I want to make

sure I said it right: 85 percent had seen or heard about the census

and had some reasonable level of information about it; and about

86–87 percent said they would definitely or probably return the

census form.

There is a residual 4 or 5 percent who are saying no. A census

is always about the last 5 percent, always about the last 5 percent.

Whether it is a problem with recruitment, whether it is a problem

with the response rate, whether it is a problem with any operations, it is always the last 5 percent that is the challenge for a

census, which has to go to 100 percent.

Nevertheless, I am very gratified and encouraged by the level of

public attention and positive attention that the census has already

received.

Most importantly—and I will return to my written testimony

here—the issues that we deal with all day long, everyday, from

bomb threats to public relations problems, to local Census offices

where we need to improve our recruitment rate, all of those are

manageable problems.

We have yet to hit a problem that is going to, as I say, somehow

put the census at risk. It may happen tomorrow. But as I sit here

today, we have not hit that problem. I think we are poised to have

52

a very successful census, a higher-than-expected response rate. It

doesn’t mean we will get 100 percent response rate, of course.

And to go back to Chairman Miller’s comment, if I could, about

nonresponse followup, obviously, if we have a higher-than-expected

response rate, it is going to help us enormously in the workload

during nonresponse followup.

To go back to the 1990 numbers, my recollection is that we

planned nonresponse followup for 6 weeks, not 10 weeks; in certain

offices it took 16 weeks, but the actual plan was only for 6 weeks.

So we actually have added 4 weeks to nonresponse followup in the

2000 design from 1990, a longer period. And as I have testified before, Mr. Miller, we will keep counting until we have exhausted our

procedures. And if that takes all summer, we will count all summer. We will count until we have exhausted our procedures.

I appreciate that that is not your view; the one that you quoted,

I really do appreciate it is not your view. I really do appreciate that

that view is out there. But I don’t think that a lot of site visits in

March are going to make people feel better—the only way we can

prove that is by doing it, come the end of June and the early part

of July. We have got to prove it by simply doing it, and we will do

it.

Mrs. MALONEY. Earlier you made mention—and both of us have

commented, and I must compliment the chairman for his really

very sound statements on the official census mailing that mimicked, it was a fundraising letter for the Southeast Legal Foundation. It was mimicked, and it actually looked to me like an official

mailing.

And I really want to know, do you think more of these type of

shenanigans will take place, and how disruptive are they to the official census?

Mr. PREWITT. It is very hard for me to anticipate. You didn’t ask

me, but I will answer this question anyway—what keeps me up

awake at night? It is not recruitment. What keeps me awake at

night is some public event which confuses the American people seriously about the census.

As I cited in my testimony, if a hacker broke in not to the census,

but to some other government file and suddenly the American people really did believe that government information was not protected, that would hurt us seriously for that in the next 2 or 3

days.

I will give you another example. We learned just yesterday that

another mailing, a large mailing, a large mass mailing has the

same digit problem as the one that we experienced. And so I woke

up this morning shaking that somehow the story would be told that

the Census Bureau had sold its mailing list, how else could this

mistake happen again?

Clearly, that is a complete falsehood.

Those are the things that make me anxious. A public story that

I know to be wrong, but happens at just the wrong moment, and

we can’t get it fixed: I am much more frightened of that kind of

event or outcome and natural disasters, of course, than I am right

now about any of our operations. Our operations are on schedule,

on track, on budget.

53

Mrs. MALONEY. You may not have any information on this, but

if you do, I am curious about how recruitment compares to 1990,

when we had a much weaker economy. Do you have any comparison as to how recruitment is going now, compared to when we had

more unemployed people?

Mr. PREWITT. I start by reminding the committee that with the

active support of the U.S. Congress, very active, important support

of the U.S. Congress, we have front-loaded our recruitment system.

That is the huge change from 1990. In 1990 it wasn’t that our rates

were so bad, it is that you have high-level attrition, and then you

are scrambling to fill those empty positions. By allowing us to

front-load, bear in mind, we are hiring two people for every one

person we need. Now is that a waste of money? No. If they all come

to work and do the job, we just get finished quicker. We will still

put them to work. But the attrition levels thus far in our early

staffing of our offices and so forth have been quite modest. They

were modest in the dress rehearsal. So I would say our overall recruitment plan, as well as recruitment rate, is much, much more

robust than 1990.

Again, every day I say, ‘‘Look, it is looking good, we are at 70

percent or 74 percent.’’ That doesn’t mean that tomorrow it won’t

go dry. You don’t know how deep that well is. But every day we

get more calls, as I just said, a million hits to our website just the

day before yesterday.

So we think there is a large enough pool out there to recruit. If

we have to change wage rates in some areas or do some other

kinds of emergency action, we will do it.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask some more questions on this recruitment issue.

As we both know, national numbers tell you one thing, but it is

really a very local issue. What happens in Bradenton, FL, my own

home, versus Manhattan—you can’t transfer the enumerators from

Manhattan to Bradenton. They might want to come to Bradenton,

it is a beautiful area. You have been there, a little Chamber of

Commerce plug there.

So based on news, the media reports and such about the different

areas, there are articles here in the city of Washington, as I mentioned, and such and in New York City.

What percentage of the 520 offices are having problems? And can

you give us a description of what those are? Are there any common

characteristics, ones that are having problems and such?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. As of March 1st—no, sorry, March 3rd, so this

is fairly recent data, we have a four-layer classification system

when we are looking at local recruitment, with green being we feel

good, we are really close to target; yellow being we have got to pay

a little bit more attention; orange being nervous making; and red

being take emergency action.

As of March 3rd, we had five LCOs in our emergency action; that

is in our red category. That is, of course, less than 1 percent. It

doesn’t make them insignificant.

As I say, the problem of a census is always that last 5 percent.

But the good thing about those five cases is that they are scattered.

It is not like they are all in Atlanta or they are all in New York;

54

they are all scattered. In fact, I don’t think New York has one of

these five.

One or two of the five are much less of a problem than what they

appear to be. For example, one of them is the LCO in the near

north side of Chicago. Now, that LCO covers an area which is actually going to have a higher response rate than the city of Chicago,

but it is targeted to have the same response rate as the rest of the

city because we didn’t break them out in anything like that level

of detail. Even though it appears in red, we don’t believe it is a red,

but we are treating it as one, nevertheless.

Then there are about 17 percent—well, let me say, all together,

about 30 percent are in the yellow-orange category, where we do

believe we have to take exceptional action, and that includes everything from sending out expertise to doing more advertising and so

forth. These numbers fluctuate every week. Some move up and

some move down, because that target is still climbing.

So you are actually right, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, you can get

a big national picture that looks very good, 74 percent, we only

need 70 at this stage, but there is variation around that, and you

have got a tail. You have got a small number of cases which are

problems, and some of those get picked up in the press—some of

them incorrectly, by the way, I have to say; sometimes the press

being used by our local recruitment people to tell a more frightening story than actually exists in our numbers in order to generate

a public response.

We found two or three cases of that. We weren’t particularly

happy about it, but nevertheless we understand from a local level

why they did it.

And I don’t mean, again, to paint a rosy picture. But of the

things that worry me right now—and I would not have known this

a month ago. I would not have known a month ago that I could sit

here today and say now that we are into it, 73,000 people are out

there distributing the questionnaires, but that the operation that

has to be staffed is staffed.

We fully staffed Alaska on schedule. I believe we will fully staff

nonresponse followup on schedule.

Mr. MILLER. How about these hard-to-count areas? Are your

staffings doing OK?

Mr. PREWITT. The pattern is not staffing. The near north side is

not a hard-to-count area. The pattern is not disproportionately in

the hard-to-count areas.

Mr. MILLER. In the last question you mentioned front-loading—

this one article was saying they have to call 10 people on the approved list before—you only get 1 out of 10, and the question concerns the shelf life of this applicant pool.

Explain to me the process. I mean, I have heard this: People take

the test, they get accepted, but you really don’t need them; and

then you may not even call them for 2 months, and they don’t

know.

How are we keeping in touch with these people, letting them

know they are in the pool?

Mr. PREWITT. It is a serious problem, as a matter of fact. We

think of this recruitment pool the same way you might think of a

military draft. You draft everyone, but you don’t call everyone. But

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when you are going to war, you don’t know for sure how many you

are going to need and when you are going to need them. You want

the pool of draftees in place. Well, what we have done is created

a very large pool of draftees, in effect.

It certainly goes stale. We do make calls, people say, no, I have

already taken a different job and so forth. So our expected ratio is

only 1 out of 5; that is, we want a recruitment pool of, in fact, even

less than 1 out of 5, 1 out of 6, a recruitment pool of 2.4 million

for about half a million jobs. So roughly a 5-to-1 ratio.

So that is a pretty high ratio, as a matter of fact. I mean, there

has got to be an awful lot of decay of that pool before we get down

to having none or having fewer than 500,000.

I saw that same story, as a matter of fact, 1 out of 10. That really did surprise me. That doesn’t mean it did not happen, but that

is not a pattern, that we are only getting 1 out of 10 of our calls

when we actually call people.

The other issue you addressed is the issue of keeping in touch

with them. We don’t. It would just be prohibitively expensive to always be writing them and saying are you still available, are you

still available, and then they get angry at us because we haven’t

called them. There are unhappy people out there who said, ‘‘I took

the test; I passed it. They say they want jobs. They continue to advertise, yet they don’t call me.’’ We explain that when people take the test. I have the materials

here which say exactly what we say to them, and not everyone internalizes that. And they read the ad and they say, why don’t they

call me. That is an issue, but there is not much we can do about

it.

When we need to have them there is on April 19th. We needed

them on March 1st to do the training for update leave; they were

there. We will need them on April 19th when we start nonresponse

followup. As we get closer to nonresponse followup, going to the response rate issue, if the response rate is at our 61 target, we are

going to need all half million of them. We will start earlier than

the 19th with some kind of reminder system to make sure that

they are going to be there.

Mr. MILLER. They are going through training now?

Mr. PREWITT. No, the update/leave people went to training.

Mr. MILLER. The update/leave people went to training.

How long ago would it be that some of these people took the test?

Does it go back to last year?

Mr. PREWITT. The testing really didn’t much start until January.

Mr. MILLER. Some may have taken the test in January and got

approved in January and then——

Mr. PREWITT. Maybe 6 months before we call them.

Mr. MILLER. It could be as much as 6 months?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. Now, a lot of the people who did the early

testing, of course, were people who were brought into our office to

work. And we did staff up our offices and, of course, then update/

leave, but only in those areas.

There are people who will have taken the test as long as 6

months before they are called. But we would not want to write

them and say we don’t think we are not going to need you, because

we won’t know that.

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To go back to your other point, you are talking about response

rates which themselves are highly variable. You are going to be 85

percent some places and 45 percent other places. So we don’t know

for sure what those places are going to be.

We can’t take a chance on telling someone we don’t need them

until we know for sure where they will be needed.

Finally, on your question of moving people from New York to

Bradenton, as you well know, we very much want to recruit from

and use staff in the local community. As a last resort—we probably

wouldn’t move that far, but as a last resort, we would have to dip

into our pool, where we had a deeper pool, to move into areas

where we had a shallower pool and pay the transportation costs.

We would still take care, of course, to match up the cultural, linguistic, racial characteristics and so forth, best as we could.

Mr. MILLER. I have a couple more questions, but if you want to

go first.

Mrs. MALONEY. Sure. The ‘‘90 Plus Five’’ program you outlined

in your testimony sounds like a very good idea, a creative way of

getting communities across the country involved in boosting their

response rates. And do you have any idea how much money you

can save if the program goals are met?

Could you just elaborate a little more on the ‘‘90 Plus Five’’ program, another accomplishment I would say?

Mr. PREWITT. We obviously are very excited about that program

for two reasons, one of which is, it does have real operational and

cost savings implications, but also it is a rallying cry. And I have

been very, very pleased by the level of adoption by mayors and

Governors around the country. It really is a rallying cry, the census

as a civic event.

And it is working that way. I am going off tonight, as a matter

of fact, and I will be making, I think as many as six or seven different stops in Virginia and North Carolina. Each one of those is

built around the ‘‘90 Plus Five’’ notion, with mayors and complete

count committees and other kinds of promotional settings. If it

were successful, that is, if we actually added 5 percent to 1990,

that is a 70 percent response rate. That is a 9 percent increase

from our current target.

Now, you have heard the number before, that each percentage

point is worth maybe as much as $25 million; that is a hard number to estimate because it is not exactly linear, but that is order

of magnitude. So if we actually were to be that successful, we

would save many multiple millions of dollars for the taxpayer if we

could actually increase the response rate to 70 percent. It would

also be good for the country along other dimensions, of course, not

just the money-saving dimension.

Mrs. MALONEY. The Bureau conducted a four-site test, full-load

test of the data capture system during the week of February 22nd.

And the system was supposed to be fully operational as of March

6, 2000, last Monday. Would you describe the test for us? What

was involved? What sorts of equipment were tested? What type of

personnel was engaged? What is full load?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. What that test does is bring up all four of our

data capture sites and test them as if they were now pumping the

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material through at the rate at which we will have to pump it

through during the data capture period itself.

It is our final major test to the data capture system, which is,

as we know, a highly technical system. A lot of forms come in wrinkled or smudge marked; all of the kinds of things that can make

it difficult to capture those data; and I can only say that it all tested out just exactly the way we expected it to.

Early on in an earlier test, in Pomona I believe it was, our capture rate—our productivity rate was less than what we wanted it

to be. We retested that later in Phoenix, and it moved up to expected levels; and then we retested it in our four-site test, the entire system simultaneously.

It is right now—again, I keep wanting to go back. It doesn’t

mean that tomorrow morning we won’t learn something, but as of

right now, the data capture system is functioning. We are now capturing data; we are recording stuff as it is coming in. As I said, we

have 500 forms already accepted over the telephone, just in the

first couple of days.

People are filing by Internet. I don’t have the number on that,

but it certainly is working. I used it myself. So the systems are

functioning.

Mrs. MALONEY. Both the chairman and I are very supportive of

Census in the Schools. In fact, we even introduced a resolution supporting it in a bipartisan and joint way.

Could you give us a little more detail on how the program is

working? How many schools and teachers are involved? And what

percentage of the students do you estimate have been reached and

will be reaching their parents, and have the materials been delivered? Has Scholastic performed well on their contract? And can you

just give us an overview of it?

Mr. PREWITT. Surely. Just quickly on Scholastic, as the subcontractor on that thing, they performed very, very well, in terms

of—we thought in terms of curriculum—the construction of the curriculum, the imaginative design and so forth.

There was a period where we were experiencing severe backlogs

in getting the materials to the school. We are now past that backlog completely. We have now got a lag time of only about 3 days

before an order comes in and the kit goes out.

I think that the number of kits now out are at 11⁄2 million; that

is a huge number of schools. The chairman and I did a really quite

attractive Census in the Schools event in his district with very sophisticated kids. I must have done 15 or 20 of them already, about

half of them with Members of Congress.

For me, they have been some of the highlights of the census period. I think it is going to be one of the most important things.

Look, the kids are really good Ambassadors for the census. And if

they go home with this message, then we are going to get a higher

response rate and especially we—as you know, we targeted the

hard-to-count areas. We are 100 percent in all of those areas. We

are obviously not 100 percent across the entire country, but we are

100 percent in the hard-to-count areas, which is roughly 40 percent

of the schools, which is how we calculated that. So we are feeling

very good about that program.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up.

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Mr. MILLER. OK. You mentioned Census in the Schools. I did another one recently in Venice, FL, in an elementary school; and I

had all the third, fourth and fifth grades come in the cafeteria, and

they brought a pencil. And I talked, and we had the map that you

make available; and they had two questions that I had to help the

students with and—in particular, it makes me think about, because

you had to list who else was in your household.

The one young boy says, ‘‘Do I count my dog?’’ I can answer that.

The other one was more difficult, and this is the type of questions you have: The child lives with the mother 3 days a week and

the father 4 days a week, and the next week is just reversed; ‘‘Who

do I get counted with?’’ Those are some of the questions. And the

mother and father may not talk well.

So there are a lot of challenges you are very aware of, but it just

came up in that particular hearing.

Mrs. Maloney just brought up the Data Capture System. I know

GAO considers that one of the great concerns right now, and they

will be testifying again next week. I don’t know their latest feeling

on it. When the test was run here in February, did it—was it the

entire system from when the forms come out of the trucks and load

it up and all the way through? Are you comfortable that the data

capture system is going to work?

Hopefully, Mrs. Maloney and I can make a trip to one of them

during the peak of it and get a chance to see it in operation, because it has to be amazing to see that volume of operation.

Mr. PREWITT. Could I just take an extra 2 minutes and ask John

Thompson to say a word. He is much more familiar with that test

than I am.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Thompson.

Mr. THOMPSON. What we did was, we ran about 2.2 million forms

per day through our scanners, and then we processed them through

the remainder of the process, including transmission of the captured data to headquarters, simultaneously to make sure that all

sites worked. That was the workload—actually, the million forms

per data headquarters was the workload that we anticipate that we

have to meet for census 2000 processing. And the test went very

well.

The one thing we didn’t test was the sorters. We didn’t put the

questionnaires back into the envelopes. But we have tested the

sorters extensively, and we used them in 1990, so the sorters

haven’t changed very much.

Mr. MILLER. How about different handwriting and such?

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes, we tested a variety of different

handwritings to make sure that the optical character recognition

could catch it, including a variety of multiple race responses.

Mr. MILLER. Since C–SPAN is covering this, I might want to

make sure that you are introduced. You have been sitting behind

Dr. Prewitt in the past several hearings while he testified. But you

are the one with the responsibility and had the task and you have

been in charge of this.

When were you first appointed to this position?

Mr. THOMPSON. I believe I was appointed in 1998 to the position

I am currently in.

Mr. MILLER. 1998. Tough job.

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Mr. THOMPSON. I have been working on the census since——

Mr. MILLER. You are a career.

Mr. THOMPSON [continuing]. Since 1980.

Mr. MILLER. You have been with the Bureau for a long time. I

think this may be your first time to actually talk to the committee.

Thank you very much. It is a tough job, and you do a fine job there.

I have one more question. It came up in your comments, and I

mentioned it too in the Salvation Army, the access to facilities serving special populations such as the Salvation Army. How much of

a problem is that? Is there anything we can do to move this along?

Mr. PREWITT. I appreciate that offer, Mr. Chairman.

No, I actually have been in very close touch with the highest

lieutenant colonel, I believe he is called, of the Salvation Army. It

is an understandable reluctance. Their judgment is that when people are eating, that this is something which is private. It is not a

confidentiality issue. It is a privacy issue.

And they are concerned that if the people who are actually sitting in the dining halls and having their meals are being enumerated that that will create a deterrent for them to come in and get

the meal.

The Salvation Army has been completely cooperative with respect to counting all of their residents, all the people who sleep

there. But it is just this one issue of the people, actually while they

are eating their meal. So what we have worked out with the Salvation Army is that these people do queue, they do get into a line before they come into the dining hall or the soup kitchen, and we will

be able to count during that period.

I should remind you that the primary count of the people without

conventional housing, as we say, or the homeless, is based on

where they sleep, not where they eat. Where they eat is only an

extra safety net in case we miss some people who don’t use any

shelters. If the people are sheltered, we think we will get them in

the shelters.

These are really the people who don’t go to the shelters, but do

come in and do get meals. We are still trying to count the people

who are sleeping in the park or sleeping on the beach. We fear we

will not get all of them. So this is an extra, extra step. Indeed, we

have to ask the people we are counting, as they get the meal, have

you already spent a night in a shelter, because if they have, then

we would not be including them in the count.

So it is a very small problem, and we think we will solve it.

Mr. MILLER. Let me thank you for your assurance a few minutes

ago that you are going—as far as close out, you are going to stay

in the field as long as it is necessary to get the possible count. I

appreciate your public assurance of that.

Mrs. Maloney, do you have any final questions?

Mrs. MALONEY. No. I have enjoyed this. I look forward to the

GAO reporting, and again would like to request that the chairman

call the Monitoring Board, both sides, to come in and report to us.

I think that is a legitimate oversight of our body, too, to look into

what the Monitoring Board is doing.

Mr. MILLER. I think we have a hearing tentatively scheduled for

the issue of this access. This is a serious—whether it is real or perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 10, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\66613 HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ceived, it is certainly perceived; and I think we need to get to the

bottom of it.

I think I see Mr. Fred Asbell, who is with—at least on the congressional side of the Monitoring Board here. I think Chris Mihm

was here earlier, certainly; I don’t know if he still is. There, he is

there.

I know you all don’t have your calendars, so you can’t do it today,

but I almost like to say—to pin you all down. But if you could get

it put together as quickly as possible, I would like to get this behind us.

I think we are getting to some critical stages, as you know, going

into the summer. We don’t want to do anything to interrupt or

interfere with the census, but we do have a responsibility to make

sure that we know everything we can, and a lot of it is gearing up

for how do you do. A lot of times this information is needed.

So I thank you for being here today.

On behalf of subcommittee, I would like to thank you for appearing before us today. I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ written opening statements be included in the

record. Without objection, so ordered.

In case there are any additional questions that Members may

have for our witnesses, I ask unanimous consent for the record to

remain open for 2 weeks for Members to submit questions for the

record, and that witnesses submit written answers as soon as practicable. I would like to submit the Census Monitoring Board’s congressional Members’ request for oversight materials, mentioned in

my opening statement for the record. I am also submitting the observation guidelines issued by the Census Bureau for the record.

And, Mrs. Maloney, you had something which will be included in

the record. Without objection, so ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Thank you again. And I will see you at the Appropriations hearing in a couple of weeks. The meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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