U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

66–280 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: EXAMINING

THE STATUS OF KEY CENSUS 2000 OPERATIONS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 8, 2000

Serial No. 106–139

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

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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

THOMAS B. HOFELLER, Staff Director

LARA CHAMBERLAIN, Professional Staff Member

ESTHER SKELLEY, Professional Staff Member

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

MARK STEPHENSON, Minority Professional Staff Member

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C O N T E N T S

Page

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

Statement of:

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of Census, accompanied by Mr.

Waite, Mr. Raines, Ms. Marks, and Ms. Dukes ......................................... 16

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

Davis, Hon. Danny K., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Illinois, prepared statement of ................................................................ 13

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

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 9

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

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 4

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of Census:

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 21

Samples of mailers .................................................................................... 42

Ryan, Hon. Paul, a Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin, article dated January 4, 2000 ............................................................... 72

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OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: EXAMINING THE STATUS OF KEY CENSUS 2000 OPERATIONS

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in room

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

of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, Maloney, and Davis.

Staff present: Jennifer M. Safavian, chief counsel; Timothy J.

Maney, chief investigator; David Flaherty, senior data analyst;

Chip Walker, communications director; Erin Yeatman, press secretary; Lara Chamberlain and Esther Skelley, professional staff

members; Jo Powers, assistant press secretary; Amy Althoff, clerk;

Michelle Ash, minority counsel; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. MILLER. Good morning. A quorum being present, the subcommittee will come to order.

We will begin with an opening statement by myself and the

ranking member, and will proceed then to Director Prewitt.

For almost 2 years, this subcommittee has been actively involved

in the oversight of the 2000 census. This subcommittee has held

hearings on a wide range of subjects, such as minority outreach,

local census data, and census addresses.

Ranking Member Mrs. Maloney and I have held field hearings in

Miami, Phoenix, and Racine, WI. We have visited inner city schools

and Indian reservations. We have been to numerous schools and

visited with children to talk about the importance of being counted

in the upcoming census.

This Congress has followed through in its commitment to give

the Census Bureau the resources it requested to conduct a full and

accurate census. In fact, the $1.7 billion additional funding requested for fiscal year 2000 was approved this past fall.

Today, we are here and the census has, at long last, begun. Today’s hearings will be one in a series to be held during the upcoming months where Congress will have the opportunity to get regular updates from the Bureau on the status of the 2000 census.

Where are things going well? Where are problems? And what can

Congress do to help?

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Once again, this committee has before it Census Bureau Director, Dr. Kenneth Prewitt. In December, Dr. Prewitt was kind

enough to come to my District and join me in census outreach efforts. It was an excellent visit. We spent time in a local high school,

spoke to an assembly full of grade schoolers, and met with local

community leaders. As Dr. Prewitt can attest, the interest in the

census is high.

This past Sunday, there was a front page article in my local

hometown newspaper, the Bradenton Herald. The front page says,

‘‘Census Groups Reach Out to Area Minorities,’’ which is exactly

the job that the Census Bureau should be doing, and it talks about

a Complete Count Committee meeting at Holy Cross Catholic

Church in Palmetto, where the Complete Count Committee and

Census people were involved in reaching out to the Hispanic community, and they said approximately 70 people, mostly Hispanics,

were in attendance.

The Reverend Necantor Labato, who is a priest at Holy Cross

Catholic Church, where they have 1,000 Hispanics, a total of 4,300

parishioners, said—let me just quote a couple things—‘‘Don’t be

afraid to answer. Don’t be afraid to get involved. Those without immigration papers, they are afraid, and I think they are wrong to

be afraid, but the reality is they are.’’

Labato said Census officials convinced him that Federal Immigration officials, taxing authorities, and other Government agencies

have no access to personal census data.

To quote the priest, ‘‘If I knew or even was suspicious that it

would be bad for you Hispanic people, I would not be involved and

would not allow them to use the parish hall.’’

That’s exactly the type effort we need to reach out to the undercounted populations.

They have, I see, a fair coming up on February 19th at a title

one school, Tillman Elementary School. They’re going to be at WalMart Supercenter, where the van is going to be showing up on February 27th, at another community fair on March 18th. This is only

1 of 550 census offices, but it is nice to see that we are making

front page of the paper, getting the word out, and that local offices

are working.

Dr. Prewitt last month traveled to Alaska to officially enumerate

the first person in the 2000 census. Arriving in the Bering Sea fishing village of Unalakleet via dog sled, a photograph that will go

down in history, Director Prewitt counted 82-year-old Stanton

Katchatag and his wife in their one-story cedar frame house.

Not only do the Native people of Alaska represent a difficult population to count because of the extreme weather and remote locations, Alaska, in 1990, had the Nation’s lowest mail response rate

of 52 percent.

Of course, we are hopeful that the $102 million ad campaign will

help the response rates rise. I’m sure virtually everyone in this

room has seen or heard at least one census ad. Many of us saw the

ad that aired during the Super Bowl. I also understand that there

is an upcoming shift in the focus of the ad campaign, and hope to

hear more about it.

Local outreach efforts, combined with the 90 Plus Five campaign,

where local governments are being asked to increase their 1990

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mail response rates by 5 percent, leave us hopeful that we can

break the downward spiral of mail response rates that we have

been experiencing for the past three decades.

I know that the announcement letters went out last month. How

is that program being received by the 39,000 governments nationwide?

Another great task is the massive employment effort that is currently underway. Hundreds of thousands of enumerators must be

hired and trained from an applicant pool of some 3 million people.

I recently read a news account that on the Navajo Reservation near

Window Rock, Arizona, the Bureau is having trouble filling the

nearly 1,500 census jobs, despite high unemployment and a $10

hourly wage.

There are reports out of Tahlequah, OK, that the 14-county region of the Cherokee Nation has only received half of the applications needed.

Also disturbing was a comment by the Cherokee chief, Chad

Smith, who said that some tribal members see no reason to cooperate with the U.S. Government. The largest percentage undercount

in 1990 was among the Native American population, and nowhere

is trust more of an issue than on reservations. I am very interested

in how the Bureau is working to overcome these issues.

I have also read reports that there are employment problems in

Kentucky, where nearly half the counties don’t have enough enumerators. Many of these areas are rural or non-city-style addresses,

and thus are subject to either update leave or list enumerate procedures. Are these rural area problems nationwide or just in isolated

pockets? And what is the Bureau doing to alleviate them?

Much of the success of this census hinges on the mail response

rate. It is, of course, necessary to prepare a worst-case scenario.

What if the anticipated mail response rate is not 61 percent but

lower? It will not be sufficient for the Bureau to come before Congress and simply ask for more money. The Members of this body—

and rightfully so—will want to know exactly how the money is to

be spent, as well as what went wrong with the original plan.

I hope today that Director Prewitt can shed some light on what

contingency plans the Bureau has and give us a sense of where we

stand just 7 weeks from census day.

As you are aware, Director Prewitt, in your invitation letter you

were asked to be prepared to comment on other areas, including:

Providing an overview of where we are in the Bureau’s operational

time line, as well as what key activities and dates lay ahead. What

is the status of the Bureau’s address listing program and new construction listing program?

How is the data capture system—which retrieves information

from millions of census forms—holding up under testing? How is

the staffing and operation of the local census offices proceeding?

I look forward to your testimony, Dr. Prewitt, and thank you for

appearing in the subcommittee.

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

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Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Dr. Prewitt. I compliment you on your dedication and

commitment, going all the way to Alaska via dog sled to remote

areas. I think that is a great testimony of your commitment to

making sure that we contact as many people as possible.

I’m glad that we are having this hearing today, and I really want

to thank the chairman for agreeing to my request to have it. It is

important that, as the Census Bureau begins reviewing for fullscale operations, Congress and the American public stay informed

on the progress of the largest peacetime mobilization ever, the U.S.

Census civic ceremony.

From reading your testimony, Dr. Prewitt, it appears that the

2000 census operations are on schedule and on budget. Things

seem to be going according to plan. Recruiting is on track, if not

ahead of schedule; 520 local census offices are open and operational. There should be one in each Congressional District. The

paid advertising campaign is moving smoothly into its most active

phase. And the address list is nearly complete.

I must say I was thrilled, as the chairman mentioned, when we

saw the ad on the Super Bowl, and I had received from Dr.

Prewitt’s office a huge book that has a listing of when the advertisements are going to be on the air so that Members of Congress

can let their constituents know, let the groups that are working

with them know, so that they can be watching and getting the

word out.

Considering the voices of gloom and doom that were prevalent a

year ago, I think we can all take pride in the excellent work of the

career professionals at the Census Bureau.

Thank you very much.

Additionally, we in Congress should be pleased that we were able

to produce, in the best bipartisan manner, $4.5 billion the Bureau

told us that they needed, amidst a tremendously complicated budget scenario.

In spite of all the good tidings for the census, there is nothing

we or the Census Bureau can do to prevent complications that

probably will arise. Of course, there are going to be problems. You

cannot conduct an operation of this scale without some problems.

Hiring over half of a million people, training these half of a million

people, and sending them out into the field is a daunting task.

I know today we will hear from Director Prewitt that the hiring

process is on track, but what if, for example, the mail-back response rate is less than we expect? Or what if, the economy doing

so well, the Bureau cannot find enough workers to conduct the census?

Let me be clear. I do not think these things will happen. I believe

that this census will be one of the best in our Nation’s history. Do

you hear that, Dr. Prewitt? And I am confident that the extensive

planning the Census Bureau has done over the last decade will pay

off. But that does not mean that we should not prepare for all contingencies, as the GAO has suggested.

I have introduced legislation, H.R. 3581, to create a contingency

fund for the 2000 census. If there are problems with the mail response rate or with the hiring program, funds need to be available

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to respond to glitches fast so that the larger job can be done on

time.

Following on recommendations from the GAO report, my bill

would also expand the labor pool for specific groups of people, including active duty military personnel and individuals who have received buy-outs from the Federal Government.

Last, it would allow recipients of Federal assistance to work for

the census without a loss of benefits. This is a great idea, one that

was originally included in a bill that my friend and colleague,

Carrie Meek, introduced. This bill has been reported out of the

Government Reform Committee with the chairman’s support.

These are common-sense preventatives to ensure a good census.

As I’ve said, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to learn that every time

table and task for the 2000 census is currently on track. I look forward to hearing the details of the many census operations from our

esteemed witness, the Honorable Kenneth Prewitt.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

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Mr. MILLER. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I’ll make a few

comments.

Given the fact that this is the beginning of the new millennium

and it is also the first time that we’ve come together, I simply want

to indicate how much pleasure I got from working with both you

and the ranking member in the old millennium planning what

we’re going to do in this one.

Mr. Chairman, let me commend you for calling this hearing to

examine the status of operations for the 2000 census. Likewise, I’d

also like to thank Dr. Prewitt and the Census Bureau for his not

only being here today, but for the tremendous work that they’ve

done getting us to this point.

As we rapidly prepare for the 2000 census, the largest peacetime

mobilization, it is important that we continue to examine the status of key operations.

In addition to examining the status of these operations, it is also

important that community leaders at every level get fully involved.

I’m pleased to note that my own Full Count Committee in Chicago has been actively engaged in raising the awareness of the importance of participation in the 2000 census.

Also, last week I joined with Mayor Daley and other community

leaders in my District to underscore how critical the census is in

determining services, programs, and representation. That particular community was seriously undercounted in the 1990 census.

Our charge, with our increased technology and understanding of

the past, is to ensure that we get better and better and better at

conducting this important activity.

The Census Bureau’s commitment to the $102 million paid advertising campaign is, in fact, working, and is serving to heighten

awareness of the 2000 census. There were, of course, the advertisements that all of you who watched the Super Bowl saw and on

radio, ads in magazines and newspapers, and I’ve seen the ads on

billboards.

This commitment to advertisement in rural and urban communities could serve the goal of greater participation of the 2000 census. Ultimately, greater participation will require the trust of the

people to return those forms and to answer the call of census enumerators.

I also would like to take this opportunity to commend my city,

the city of Chicago, for the tremendous effort that has been put

forth by city government to raise awareness and the comprehensive

program that has been put together under the leadership of Mayor

Daley.

I also want to commend the Chicago media, both its print and

electronic. I’ve seen editorials in the ‘‘Chicago Sun Times,’’ in the

‘‘Chicago Tribune,’’ in the ‘‘Chicago Daily Defender’’ alerting people

to the fact that there is nothing to fear, and that, in all likelihood,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt could be quoted when he said that the

only thing that they have to fear would, in fact, be fear, itself, but

that this data, this information cannot be used, will not be used,

has not been used for any purpose other than to count the people.

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I look forward to the testimony of Dr. Prewitt, and certainly

know that he is going to shed some additional light on those challenges which are ahead.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and yield back the rest of the time.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Dr. Prewitt. With you is Mr. Waite, Mr. Raines, Ms.

Marks, and Ms. Dukes. Why don’t you all come forward and be

sworn, just in case your testimony is needed.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MILLER. Director Prewitt, your opening statement, sir.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF

CENSUS, ACCOMPANIED BY MR. WAITE, MR. RAINES, MS.

MARKS, AND MS. DUKES

Dr. PREWITT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mrs.

Maloney, Mr. Davis. I do want to begin by thanking you for your

leadership in establishing the bipartisan congressional support for

this census effort. The partnership with Congress has taken off in

quite impressive ways, and that partnership does send a strong

message across America that all of us have to be united in the goal

of achieving a complete and accurate census.

The congressional partnership is launched. Members of Congress

have really taken on the challenge promoting the census—local

town hall meetings, public service announcements, local census

grand openings, publicizing census jobs, and, obviously, rather

heavy use of your own congressional newsletters.

What I will do in these oral remarks is to quickly, and therefore

necessarily superficially, offer a broad overview of current progress.

My written testimony attempts to cover specific issues raised in

your invitation letter in more depth.

The major message is that census 2000 is on track, is on schedule. Were this not so, I would be bringing it to your attention.

There is no doubt in my mind that we will need the full support

of Congress, particularly of this committee, were we to foresee or

encounter any major threats to successful census.

Since I reported to you last fall, the actual enumeration for census 2000 has begun. We have produced a master address file containing approximately 120 million addresses, have printed the

questionnaires that will go to each of these addresses, have opened

up all 520 local census offices, are intensely promoting the census,

and actively seeking to hire the army of workers we will need to

do the job.

As we speak, census takers are systematically canvasing the remote areas of Alaska to complete a questionnaire for each housing

unit and its inhabitants. And, as was referenced, I did have the

honor of conducting the first enumeration in Unalakleet, AK, a village on the Bering Sea about 400 miles northwest of Anchorage.

I do want to put into the record that I was under the supervision

of a team leader, because I was considered a trainee, and I would

tell you that I was quite moved. After I finished that first enumeration, the first one in the Nation, first one in the millennium, if you

will, I had a lump in my throat and I felt very proud to have initiated what we know will be a very major, successful census. Indeed,

if the warm welcome that we received in Unalakleet, including

whale blubber, for which some of us did acquire a taste—it is an

acquired taste—if that warm welcome can be replicated throughout

this country, we will, indeed, have a successful census.

What Unalakleet means is, ‘‘The wind that blows to the east.’’

What we tried to signal with that successful enumeration—we’ve

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now counted 100 percent of that village—is to try to send a signal

across the country that if we can do 100 percent in a remote village

on the edge of the Bering Sea, we should be able to do 100 percent

in the rest of the country.

Why are we already counting the people in remote Alaska? Because travel is easier now than it will be when the spring thaws

make the villages inaccessible, and many Alaska Natives who congregate in their villages in winter will have dispersed to fish and

hunt.

This is just one of the many examples where the Census Bureau

has crafted procedures to meet very specific enumeration challenges.

The next big field operation begins March 3rd. Census enumerators will deliver questionnaires to some 20 million housing units in

the update/leave areas of the country. These areas are those with

different address types, mostly in small towns and rural areas

where the address systems have less geographic structure.

Census enumerators, in addition to leaving a questionnaire at

each house, will also check for any missing addresses. This is what

we mean by the ‘‘update’’ part. We update our address file.

And, of course, householders are expected to mail back the form

in the postage paid envelope.

Then, beginning March 13th continuing through March 15th,

U.S. Postal Service will deliver questionnaires to some 98 million

addresses in the mail out and mail back areas of the country.

These are areas where the housing units have city-style addresses,

such a 101 Main Street.

These addresses are mostly in major urban centers, but also in

many small-and mid-sized towns and some rural areas. As in update/leave areas, householders are expected to return the mail.

Also, beginning March 13th and continuing through March and

April, census enumerators will visit slightly less than a million

housing units in list enumerate areas, similar to remote Alaska but

where an early start was not dictated by special conditions. These

are remote rural areas or areas of significant seasonal resident

populations where it is not efficient to compile a pre-census address

list. At the time census enumerators visit these housing units, they

will also list the unit and complete the questionnaire; thus, there

is no separate non-response followup for these areas because, indeed, we will have their information.

Obviously, for housing units not returning the census form, currently estimated at approximately 46 million, we will send enumerators in the non-response followup operation. This operation is

scheduled to begin April 27 and will continue for 10 weeks until

July 1st. That 10-week period is, of course, an average. Some areas

will require less time and some more.

Let me turn quickly to marketing. Through our marketing program, we are aggressively seeking to encourage response to the

census so that we can keep the non-response workload as small as

possible. We began our paid advertising campaign last November,

placing ads to educate people about the importance and potential

benefits of the census. We have now entered the second phase of

our paid advertising campaign, designed to motivate response with

the message, ‘‘This is your future. Don’t leave it blank.’’

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During the months of February and March, census 2000 will be

among the top two or three advertisers in the Nation. Ads will appear on every television network and on cable television, radio,

magazines, newspapers, billboards, subways, buses, and so on.

Overall, the census 2000 advertising campaign will comprise

some 250 different creative elements and more than 130,000 individual media placements.

Paid advertising is just one piece of the Census Bureau’s integrated marketing strategy for census 2000. The other pieces include partnership; the package that includes the advance letter,

questionnaire, and thank you reminder post cards; media relations;

promotions and special events—many of which have already been

referenced in your opening comments.

Each of these pieces has its own strengths, and by working in

concert we hope we will reach and motivate everyone to participate

in the census.

Of these, partnership is perhaps the most important. We already

have some 55,000 partnership agreements and Complete Count

Committees in State, local, and tribal governments, businesses, national, and community-based organizations. Educators have ordered over 800,000 teaching kits for use in our Census in Schools

initiative.

Next week, 12 recreational vehicles, one in each census region,

will set out across the country to promote census 2000. We have

a very high-profile launch event planned for next Tuesday, February 15th.

Each of these vehicles will be equipped with exhibits, videos,

printed information and other giveaways to spread the message

that census 2000 is on the way. This road tour is designed to generate media attention in various markets, from small towns to

large cities, and enhance the efforts of our partnership and media

specialists.

Finally, as the chairman has referenced, we have launched an

initiative to encourage grassroots participation in every town, city,

county, State, and tribal area in the Nation. We are providing the

highest elected official, as well as Members of Congress, with tool

kits that include sample news releases, articles, talking points, and

other written materials; a dedicated website to enable participants

to obtain updated information and download promotional materials; and a toll-free number to allow elected officials to call for additional information.

In this campaign, we are challenging communities to increase

their overall response rates in census 2000 by at least 5 percentage

points over their 1990 level. This component, called ‘‘90 Plus Five,’’

is setting a public target for mail-back of 70 percent nationwide.

That is a 5 percent increase from the 1990 base.

To draw maximum public attention to this effort, mail-back response rates for each jurisdiction will be posted on the Internet and

otherwise made public and updated daily from March 27 to April

11. It will then be followed by a second component, Because You

Count, which is aimed at increasing cooperation with census enumerators when they come knocking on doors.

We are making every effort to convert this census into a civic

event of the highest order.

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We are gratified by the enthusiastic, even exuberant, involvement in the census by so many partners and local governments. I

might note, however, that many of the promotional events are independently planned and managed. They are not, even indirectly,

under the control of the Census Bureau. It is likely that the exuberance at times will generate events or materials that might receive less than positive public response. I hope that this committee

will appreciate that not every news story or letter from a constituent about the census will be describing something that the Census

Bureau, itself, is responsible for.

Turning quickly then to hiring—clearly, one of the key challenges

to a successful census is our ability to recruit hundreds of thousands of short-term, part-time workers in an exceptionally tight

labor market. Hiring is progressing well, and at this time we have

no reason to believe that we will be unable to reach our goal.

We have met hiring goals for every operation thus far, and in

early January we launched a blitz to hire 500,000 temporary census workers to fill the 860,000 jobs we will need in 2000, most of

which will be for non-response followup.

We believe we will need to test 3 million individuals for these

jobs, about 6 per position, because of anticipated turnover, applicants who fail background checks, and so forth.

More specifically, we want to have a qualified applicant pool of

2.4 million individuals. Our goal, of course, is to hire local people

who are familiar with their communities.

So far, we have recruited nearly 1.2 million qualified applicants,

half of the total needed and slightly ahead of our target for February 1st. April 19th is our target date for the qualified applicant

pool of 2.4 million.

To keep on target with recruitment goals, we are using paid advertising on television, radio, print ads, and on buses. We’ve also

established a job information site on the Internet. In one recent

week, we had over 400,000 calls to our telephone job line and nearly 700,000 hits on our Internet recruitment site, so there is great

and, we believe, growing interest in census jobs.

We are partnering with a number of organizations to help us

achieve our goal. I will mention just two under a grant from the

Department of Labor. Goodwill Industries is working to identify

welfare-to-work participants who are qualified for census jobs and

is using its retail stores to distribute recruiting information to individuals who are not in the welfare-to-work program.

We are also partnering with the Corporation for National Service, which has 30,000 partner agencies with more than 700,000 volunteers in its three programs, and they are assisting us in our recruitment efforts.

Then, sir, I want to make quick reference to our contractors. As

part of this progress report, I want to remind the committee that

a significant percentage of our budget is contracted out to private

industry, with a paid advertising campaign, of course, but also for

data capture, telephone assistance centers, network operations,

electronic data dissemination, and other key operations.

These technological contracts add up to approximately $1 billion.

Yesterday, we convened senior officials from Lockheed Martin,

TRW, Unisys, IBM, and other contractors. Each company reported

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on its progress to date. The uniform message is that they are ready

to go. More than that, these senior officials publicly expressed their

pride at being associated with census 2000 and their individual and

collective commitment to work noncompetitively in this endeavor

and, in fact, to go the extra mile.

Mr. Chairman, I conclude these opening remarks with a pledge

under oath to this committee. The Census Bureau is now engaged

in the massive, complex effort, one that the GAO has described—

and as you all have referenced—as the largest peacetime mobilization in the Nation’s history. Literally hundreds and hundreds of individual operations are already underway, and every Census Bureau employee responsible for some part of census 2000 is fully engaged.

At the same time, this committee, the General Accounting Office,

the Congressional Monitoring Board, and other units of the Government must fulfill their appropriate oversight functions.

I very much appreciate that, in discharging this committee’s

oversight responsibilities, you, Mr. Chairman, have taken into account that the census is underway and that we are fully engaged.

I also report to you that I met a few days ago with senior officers

of the GAO, and we jointly agreed that the principle that should

guide GAO oversight at this stage is constructive engagement, the

phrase that was introduced by Nancy Kingsbury, Assistant Comptroller General.

I have written the co-chairs of the Congressional Monitoring

Board asking for a meeting to review how best to ensure that its

considerable oversight activities are conducted in a manner compatible with the intense operational pressures we now face.

My pledge to you and to other oversight agencies is that we will

bring to your attention quickly any operational crisis that could put

the census at risk. Obviously, in an effort of this complexity and

enormity, there will be dozens of small-scale problems every day.

I could give you examples of today’s issue. The ones of last week

have been solved. The ones of next week are not yet known to us.

My pledge is not to try to inform you of each and every one of

these small-scale issues, but to take seriously my responsibility to

inform you if we foresee or encounter a problem that could put the

census at risk.

As of today, the important word is that no such threat is in view.

Census 2000 is on track and on schedule.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Director Prewitt.

It is exciting to know that the first people in this country have

been counted, and the process is going to go very quickly over these

next few months.

Let me clarify a couple things on dates.

Initially, for the people that are going to be responding by mail,

a card will go in the mail to advise people a census form is on the

way, correct?

Dr. PREWITT. The first week of March. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. That’s the first week in March. And then on the

13th or so the forms will actually go in the mail?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes. The Post Office is scheduled to mail between

March 13th and 15th.

Mr. MILLER. That’s a huge undertaking for the Post Office, so

you have to work closely with them to prepare for that type of system.

And then another card, a reminder card, will go in the mail——

Dr. PREWITT. During the last week of March.

Mr. MILLER. OK. The design of these cards—somebody is helping

with that?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. They have been researched.

Mr. MILLER. There’s a little color to them or something?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. OK. Good.

Dr. PREWITT. As a matter of fact, on that particular issue, not too

much color. We want to make sure that these don’t look like junk

mail.

Mr. MILLER. OK.

Dr. PREWITT. And so we did subject them to a lot of testing to

try to make them look very official.

Mr. MILLER. Good. That’s the idea.

Now, when do you start doing the non-response followup? When

the forms come in, they go to four different distribution centers and

they’re scanned. The envelopes will have a bar code on them, correct?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. And that’s how you can very quickly tell that day.

It’s automated to know the response rate.

Dr. PREWITT. When the envelopes come in, they are immediately

scanned to the address. We’re not yet scanning the questionnaire

itself.

Mr. MILLER. Right.

Dr. PREWITT. Only the fact that the envelope has come in, the

bar-coded envelope has come in.

Mr. MILLER. And that bar-coded envelope will tell the address of

the person?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. OK. And that will be fed in so we will know.

Then the non-response followup will begin when? Give me the

date.

Dr. PREWITT. April 27th.

Mr. MILLER. April 27th for 10 weeks, until——

Dr. PREWITT. Early July.

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Mr. MILLER. Early July. Now, how do you close out? Would you

explain how closeout will work on this non-response followup?

They’ll go knock on the door? I mean, how does that work?

Dr. PREWITT. Our basic rule is that we try to make six contacts

per household, three in person and three by phone. We get the

phone numbers as best we can by either using, obviously, phone

books, other systems, or by asking a neighbor and so forth, so we

do have a three visit and three phone call limit. After that, we believe we’re not likely to find the person.

Mr. MILLER. How long a period of time will that be over?

Dr. PREWITT. Well, our rules call that visits and phone calls have

to be made at different times of the day and different days of the

week, so that if you try to find the person on a Wednesday afternoon, then you should go back the next time on a Saturday morning, the next time on a Sunday night, and so forth. And that will

be spread across a number of weeks. Of course, you’ve got an enumerator with a stack of non-response followup households to visit,

and they will be doing these during this period of time.

They will then report back to their crew leaders, of course, when

they no longer believe that they’re able to reach one of those households.

Obviously, we’re in a bind at all times in this. We’re trying to

save the taxpayer money. Every time we send an enumerator to a

household we pay their transportation cost, we pay their hourly

cost, and if we have reason to believe that after six efforts that

we’re not likely to get a response, then we won’t send them out an

8th, 9th, 10th time. It wouldn’t be a prudent use of our resources.

Mr. MILLER. Then what? Then what, after we don’t have any response?

Dr. PREWITT. We then do have what we call ‘‘closeout procedures,’’ or ‘‘final attempt’’ where possibly you go to proxy interviews, which is to say we ask a neighbor, or someone who might

have reason to know who is in that housing unit? Can you give us

a rough estimate, as best you can, about the composition of that

household, and then we’ll record that as a response. It is tagged in

the file as a proxy response.

Mr. MILLER. Is this any different from 1990?

Dr. PREWITT. No.

Mr. MILLER. The time for the six contacts—I mean, if someone

is on vacation—Easter is late this year, and people are going on

holiday vacations. It could be a week or two.

Dr. PREWITT. Right.

Mr. MILLER. So there will be time to spread it out?

Dr. PREWITT. Certainly. Yes, sir. Spread across.

Mr. MILLER. All right.

Dr. PREWITT. And, again, using neighbors often.

Mr. MILLER. Right.

Dr. PREWITT. Saying, ‘‘Look, we knocked on the door of somebody

down the street, and nobody seems to be home,’’ and they say,

‘‘Well, that’s because they’re gone for 2 weeks.’’ Then we wait 2

weeks. We tag that and we wouldn’t come back for 2 weeks. So it’s

spread across a fairly extensive period of time.

38

Mr. MILLER. Could you comment some more on this contingency

plan? I know in your statement you said you’ll come back to Congress, which, of course——

Dr. PREWITT. Right.

Mr. MILLER. And I know there are all kinds of contingencies——

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. From the individual areas that may

have a low response rate, or nationwide. I mean, if the response

rate is 51 percent, we’ve got a crisis, obviously.

Dr. PREWITT. Sure.

Mr. MILLER. So can you give me some more explanation what the

contingency plan is?

Dr. PREWITT. We have a large number of contingency operations

for all kinds of activities, and we can talk about those specifically.

What happens if we lose a local office? What happens if something

happens in a data capture center? We have numerous, numerous

contingencies built into all kinds of our operations—technological

backup systems, capacity to move people quickly. If something happens to an office, we would actually be able to reduplicate that office quickly in another office. So we have a lot of those kind of contingency plans.

But I think you are specifically addressing, of course, the question of the mail-back response?

Mr. MILLER. Yes. Let’s talk about that.

Dr. PREWITT. Could I spend a few moments explaining the 61

percent? That may help us understand the contingencies that we

have to put in place.

Mr. MILLER. OK.

Dr. PREWITT. After 1990, when the initial mail-back response

rate came in at 65 percent—down 10 percent, as you know, from

the previous decade—the early work of the Census Bureau looking

at the pattern of response, responses to other kinds of surveys, the

changing demography in the country, and so forth, led us to an estimate as low as 55 percent.

If you’d gone back to Census Bureau documents in the immediate

period after 1990, most of the conversation would have been, ‘‘We

have got to anticipate the possibility of a mail-back response rate

as low as 55 percent in 2000.’’

The Census Bureau then engaged in a number of experiments.

The experiments included what would happen if you could make

the form more user friendly.

The 1990 form is a FOSDIC-based form, which was also a technological innovation by the Census Bureau. Fill in the circles so it

could be data scanned.

Well, when you’re doing a FOSDIC form, you have to have much

more complicated instructions. So when you look at it, you can

open it up and say, ‘‘This is just too hard. I’m just not going to do

it.’’ And we don’t know how many people out there actually don’t

do the census form because they are intimidated by it, but we do

know that, once we designed a more user-friendly form—and you’ve

seen the form, of course. It’s very readable. It’s simple questions.

You just write it in, and so forth. All of that, of course, was based

upon the fact that we could do optical scanning recognition. We had

a higher quality of technology to do the data scanning in 2000, so

39

we could design a form where, instead of putting in a four and a

seven in two little FOSDIC circles, you could simply write in ‘‘47.’’

It also made it a more attractive format.

That’s one experiment.

We obviously looked into the whole issue of multiple languages,

and we did take the questionnaire up to six languages, as you

know, as we’ve testified before.

We also went to three mailings instead of one mailing.

Another thing we did in 2000 that we had not done in 1990, we

make it more prominent on the envelope that this is required by

law. That was another experiment.

So we did a series of experiments, and let me be completely candid with you so you won’t have to remind me—one of those experiments was also the second mailing experiment.

Setting aside for a moment the second mailing experiment, the

other experiments all led us to move from 55 to 61 percent as our

estimate. That’s the basis of it. It’s rooted in some experience with

testing different kinds of procedures. Mailing procedures, form procedures, and so forth got us to 61 percent.

Because the Census Bureau is a data-driven organization, it

doesn’t like to estimate the behavior of the American population

where it doesn’t have evidence. The 61 percent does not take into

account the impact of the advertising campaign or the promotional

effort, because we have no experience to sit here and tell the U.S.

Congress that that will increase it by 3 or 4 or 5 percent. We just

don’t know.

Obviously, the fact that we’ve gone public with the Plus Five

campaign is based upon our increasing confidence that we will do

better than the 61 percent, but we only have evidence to predict

a 61 percent response rate.

That’s a long answer, but I wanted you to know that 61 percent

wasn’t just pulled out of the hat. It was based upon demographic

modeling, modeling of response rates, attention to what will happen if you change the form this way, if you send out three mailings

instead of just the one mailing, if you use first class instead of

third class, and so forth.

Now, what is our contingency plan if it is below 61 percent?

There are two big concerns. There are actually a lot of big ones,

but I’ll just talk about the two biggest ones.

Mr. MILLER. I’ve gone well past my 5 minutes.

Dr. PREWITT. I’m sorry.

Mr. MILLER. But I’m interested, and I think the rest of the committee is, too.

Mrs. MALONEY. We are, too.

Mr. MILLER. OK. Go ahead.

Dr. PREWITT. Two big concerns, obviously, at this stage. One is

if we can recruit enough people to do the job, and the other is the

response rate. Those two concerns interact.

Obviously, if we do extremely well with our recruitment pool and

the response rate slips a little bit, we still have enough people to

go out and do the job. Or if we don’t do so well in our recruitment

but our response rate is slightly higher, then we’re not as anxious

about the fact that we only have 1.8 or 2 million people in our applicant pool and not 2.4. Those two things are very tightly linked.

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Then there is a third big component, which is the budget. Obviously, we budgeted it at 61 percent and that labor pool. So if the

response rate were to dip much below 61 percent, 60 percent, 59

percent, we’ve got enough flexibility that we think we can recover

from that—57 percent, 56 percent, we’re very anxious and we’re

not sure we’ve got the flexibility and the capacity to recover.

Now, what is our contingency for that? And I’m not trying to be

evasive. It depends almost entirely on what’s happened to our recruitment pool, because if at that point we’re behind in our recruitment as well as having a lower response rate, we actually have a

crisis, and we have nothing to say to you as a contingency other

than we will have to go out and probably increase the wage rate.

That would be one way we would increase the labor pool, and that

would, obviously, cost more money. We obviously would have to

perhaps extend the time that we’re in the field, because if we have

got to go out and find—let us use extremes. If it is a 40 percent

response rate we can’t do non-response followup in 10 weeks, in all

likelihood, unless we hired, you know, 3 million people instead of

500,000 people. Even then, the management of that would be not

something that we wanted to try to do.

So the contingency plan has got to be—if there’s a serious slighting of that response rate, it’s got to be figured out in terms of the

size of the recruitment pool you’ve got in place, and if it’s insufficient, there’s nothing that we can put in place. We can put in a

contingency for losing an office. We can put in a contingency for

losing a data capture center. We can put in a contingency for address mail-back problems. We can put in a contingency for lots of

things. But there is really no thing that you can do if you’re really

looking at a 55 or 50 percent response rate when we expect it to

be 61, short of rebuilding the census, which is what we would have

to do.

Since I know this is important, I’ll just go on with one other sentence on this. The important thing is, we will know as early as

April 1 or 2 whether we will need a hearing on April 12th, which

is our date for beginning to cut for non-response followup.

That is, our internal models tell us at what rate we expect to get

responses, and for the most part the American people respond to

something like this, if they are going to, quickly, and then it begins

to taper off. There’s no reason to presume that you’re going to get

them. If you haven’t gotten them by April 1st, you’re going to get

a few more scattered out all the way up into May, but you’re not

going to get big hunks later on in the period. That we know from

lots of experience.

So the important thing is that we will know early—that is, a

good 2 weeks before when we have to actually begin to put in a

non-response followup process into place. Therefore, when I say

‘‘come back and talk to Congress,’’ I mean that fairly seriously. It’s

not just a throw-away line.

But the important thing is that by the time we actually had a

hearing, on April 12th, we would have come in with very clean

plans and with a budget that would be required to sort of get us

out of this hole which we would have found ourselves in.

Sorry for that long answer.

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Mr. MILLER. As you know, the Congress has responded with

supplementals in the past, and we stand prepared to move as

quickly as necessary, but it is encouraging that 61 percent is kind

of the lower end of your expectations, we hope. One time you were

projecting, I think, 67 percent, and it dropped.

Dr. PREWITT. Right. That was the second mailing question.

Mr. MILLER. OK.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Yes. Thank you very much.

I would like to followup on some of the chairman’s questions. Do

you have examples of your three mailers with you that are going

to be going out?

Dr. PREWITT. No.

Mrs. MALONEY. You don’t?

Dr. PREWITT. Sorry.

Mrs. MALONEY. Could you send it to us?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. Could we have a look at it? I’d just like to see

them. And maybe we could have them as part of the record so we

just have it as part of the official record.

Dr. PREWITT. Yes. Sorry.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. I’d like to turn to the transparency issue. Dr.

Prewitt, you have spoken before about the unprecedented level of

scrutiny the 2000 census is receiving from various oversight

groups, everyone from this subcommittee to the Census Monitoring

Board to the National Academy of Sciences and the Secretary of

Commerce’s Advisory Committee is involved. In fact, I understand

the National Academy recently had another meeting to review the

Bureau’s planned statistical design.

In many respects, this will be the most transparent census our

Nation has ever had. Would you please outline the major events

that have occurred in this regard since we met with you last fall?

And is there another group that is reviewing you that I didn’t mention? Just address the entire transparency oversight issue, if you

would elaborate and give us more information on it.

Dr. PREWITT. Yes. Well, I do think the GAO reports that have

emerged since last fall have been a major part of this. I think that,

as this committee requested, the GAO did do a thorough review of

the revised budget, the $1.7 billion, and asking the understandable

question of making certain that this $1.7 billion was associated

with new procedures that we had to put in place because of the Supreme Court ruling, and I think the GAO report did confirm that.

It was a very, very intensive analysis of our budgeting and of our

operations.

There was also, of course, the GAO report on the LUCA program.

There is now, most recently, one on the data capture.

So I would say that, in terms of the oversight activities, the GAO

has certainly done the most sophisticated and sustained research

and investigation.

The Inspector General’s office, of course, has also conducted,

when appropriate, its own independent investigations. It did one on

the advertising campaign, to make certain that this money was

well spent, was appropriately spent. We got very good marks from

that review.

The Monitoring Board has issued a number of reports, sometimes

independently from the Presidential and congressional side—I

guess I would say mostly independently. The one that was joint

was on the advertising campaign. That was also very favorable.

The Monitoring Board, the congressional side of the Monitoring

Board, just issued one on the undercount issue. I actually just got

that this morning. I read drafts of it, but I can’t give you in detail

what they are saying.

And, of course, we’ve had hearings with this committee. And we

do have a number of advisory committees, some six or seven of

them, that do meet quarterly. That means we have one meeting almost all of the time.

So we do think that we have been enormously responsive to the

understandable interest of this country in how well census 2000

has been planned.

I think the most important thing I can say, Mrs. Maloney, about

the review that has taken place since then—and I don’t mean to

judge my judgers harshly, but mainly the message is that things

are on track and on schedule, but there are still risks.

Now, they don’t necessarily say what to do about them, other

than this is a big, complicated operation and, therefore, something

67

could go wrong—including that we could have a lower than anticipated response rate or we could have trouble with recruitment.

We understand those risks. We are doing everything we can to

compensate for them.

So I would say that out of that effort we have yet to be challenged to do something major that is different from what we are

already doing.

Just quickly, on the National Academy of Science meeting, which

was a very important meeting—it was a big public venue—the

leading critics of dual system estimation were invited to make presentations and there was a lively exchange between the critics and

supporters. It was a very important meeting for us. We took back

some bits and pieces of things where we could improve, but, again,

it did not challenge the heart of what our design is in any kind of

sustained, systematic way that led us to sort of say, ‘‘Oh, my goodness, we’d better not be doing what we are doing.’’ I think quite the

opposite—we felt reasonably confident with what we had put before

them.

We will have other meetings with the National Academy of

Science, with their advisory committees and so forth.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

May I ask another question?

Mr. MILLER. OK. We’re going to do another round, too.

Mrs. MALONEY. Let me ask him really quick, because you really

went over, too.

Dr. Prewitt, last week I introduced legislation which would create a contingency fund of $100 million for the census 2000. This

fund could be accessed if you ran into any types of serious problems

such as, for example, the mail response rate drops significantly, as

you mentioned, or the recruitment rate was very low.

My bill also expands the labor pool for the 2000 census among

certain specific groups, including active duty members of the military, those receiving certain Federal benefits, and Federal retirees

who have Federal buy-outs.

Have you had an opportunity to review this legislation?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes, I have.

Mrs. MALONEY. I’d like your comments on it, please.

Dr. PREWITT. Yes. If I could take up first the issue of expanding

the recruitment pool, we, obviously, welcome anything that will expand the recruitment pool. Even though, as I’ve just testified, we

are on schedule, there’s something about a recruitment pool which

is always soft. You never know when it is going to go—tomorrow

morning the phones could quit ringing. We don’t expect that to

happen, but they could, so we are still in a mode where we are

making every effort to increase the recruitment pool.

I would say, with respect to the part of the legislation which addresses the waiver issues, that obviously at a certain point it will

be too late. We are at 1.2 million now. We just simply need all the

help we can get this week and next week. So I would urge the Congress, if it can act on those issues, to do so expeditiously or it will

simply be past the point where we can take much advantage of it.

With respect to the contingency fund, as I have said in our own

response to the GAO report, obviously—and as I just said to the

chairman—I might say in the chairman’s defense the reason that

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his time went over 10 minutes is I talked about 10 minutes in response to one question. It is hard for us to imagine that if we have

a response rate seriously below 61 percent that we will be able to

complete the census and provide the apportionment numbers on

schedule without additional funds. I just don’t know what else we

could say. There’s nothing else that we could do.

I would say about this specific amount that you’ve mentioned in

your appropriation that the amount is hard to know at this time

because a 55 percent response rate kicks into place perhaps a different number than the number that you’ve put there. A 59 percent

response rate—if other things have gone very well—we might not

need additional money. We might then have to come back to the

U.S. Congress—as you know, we’re under a restriction not to move

moneys across frameworks. We might have to come back and say,

‘‘Look, we might want to move some money across a framework in

order to reach this.’’

So it’s hard for me to sit here today, for the reasons that I’ve

tried to explain a moment ago, to specify the amount that we would

need because it is so dependent upon the interaction between the

response rate and the quality of the recruitment pool at that time.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. Hi, Dr. Prewitt. Thanks for coming by. I know you are

a busy guy, so we want to let you get back to your job.

I just have one quick question I want to ask you. I have toured

my local census office twice since they have been up and running.

I represent the First District of Wisconsin, and that would be your

Racine office. I think the number is 2546.

In each occasion that I visited with the workers of your local census office 2546, they’ve presented me with a problem that they

have in recruiting, and it’s in a letter I wrote to you on January

20th. I haven’t had a response yet. It is this: they’re not getting

their paychecks on time. In one instance, they waited 6 weeks for

the last paycheck, the workers at the census office.

They’re still telling me—I spoke with them actually 2 days ago—

that they are still not getting their paychecks on time. They believe

that this is critical toward not only attracting, but maintaining, a

good work force.

My concern is that if this is happening all across the country, let

alone in our Racine office, and people are being hired but not being

paid, not even being paid for 6 weeks—you know, 2 days I can understand, but 6 weeks, that’s going to hurt our ability to retain the

work force we need.

Is this a problem that is occurring across the country? Is this isolated to local census office 2546, or the Chicago region? Or, if this

has been a problem, has it been solved? It apparently hasn’t been

solved in my neck of the woods. Could you comment on that,

please?

Dr. PREWITT. Well, I’m going to ask Marvin Raines to join me,

if I can.

Mr. RYAN. Please.

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Dr. PREWITT. I would say, in general, Mr. Ryan, that it has almost got to be an isolated problem, because if it were across the

country it would be a very, very major crisis at this stage.

Mr. RYAN. That’s what I thought, too.

Dr. PREWITT. And it is exactly the kind of crisis that I would feel

obligated to bring to the committee’s attention, because it is something that could put the census in jeopardy if we are unable to pay

our employees on a regular basis.

With respect to that particular office, can we offer some——

Mr. RAINES. I’m afraid I can’t offer anything right now.

Dr. PREWITT. We’re a little surprised.

Mr. RYAN. Well, I sent you a letter on January 20th this year,

almost a month ago. I CC’d Stanley Moore, the director of the Chicago office. I sent it to you. I would just read it to you briefly, and

then I won’t chew up much more time.

Dr. PREWITT. We think we are in fairly good shape with respect

to responding to congressional letters. Honestly, Mr. Ryan, our system doesn’t seem to——

Mr. RYAN. Well, I sent you a followup letter on January 25, as

well, asking for response to the first letter. So I’ve sent you two letters, one on the 20th and one on the 25th.

You’re at the Bureau of Census, right? That’s the address I used.

Dr. PREWITT. I’m with Statistics.

Mr. RYAN. Suitland Federal Center, room 2049, Building Three.

Dr. PREWITT. I don’t doubt your address.

Mr. RYAN. Here’s the point.

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. RYAN. They’re not getting paid at the Racine office. They’ve

lost some people because they’re not getting paid, so it is hurting

their ability to attract workers. I hope it is an isolated incident, but

if it isn’t, please, please look into this.

Dr. PREWITT. We’ll be in touch with your office tomorrow.

Mr. RYAN. OK.

Thank you. That’s all I have.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Prewitt, we hear people talking about the difficulty of recruiting. Is that just in certain areas, or is it across the board?

Dr. PREWITT. Well, the most important thing to say is that we

have met every recruitment goal that we’ve had where we’ve had

to have so many people in place for a given operation to date. That

is, we’ve hired a total of about 160,000 people for our different operations to date for our address listing work across the country.

Certain areas were harder than other areas, but we hired everyone.

We had to hire a lot of people for our Alaska work. Of course, all

of those were there on time.

We have 520 offices. Each of those have four managers. That’s

obviously slightly in excess of 2,000 persons. All of those have been

hired.

So in none of the operations which hit a schedule obligation were

we not able to find the number of people we needed.

Now, the next big one, as I said, starts on March 3rd with the

update/leave. I actually provided you a table in your document, and

you will see that across our 12 regions plus Puerto Rico—that’s in

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attachment A—what you have there is the recruiting goal for the

update/leave operation, which is the next one, which is a quite substantial set of recruiting goals. But in every region save one we are

well above our target.

Now, the problem with the newspaper articles is that you’ve got

different operations in different regions. It’s a very complex system.

You know, when do you need how many people to do this operation

and that operation? I don’t want to sit here today and promise you

we will not have a recruitment problem, but no operation in census

2000 has not gone forward on schedule because of a recruitment

problem.

Mr. DAVIS. But you’re saying also that the goals are not necessarily the same in every place.

Dr. PREWITT. They’re extremely different because they are different operations. Where you have a large update leave operation,

you’ve got to have a lot of people in your recruitment pool right

now because you’re going to need them in about 3 weeks.

Non-response followup starts April 27th. You actually don’t

want—because a recruitment pool can also go sour, you know, you

think you’ve got it all, but by the time you don’t call them back for

a month they say, ‘‘Well, they must not want me. I’ll go do something else.’’

So there is an extremely complex set of operations and recruitment strategies you’ve got going on simultaneously.

The big picture I gave you is the accurate one, which is—I think

it is as of February 6th we were running about 5 percent ahead of

our national goal—not in every region, of course, and not in every

local office.

Mr. DAVIS. Are you hearing anything that’s alarming coming

from any of the what we call ‘‘hard to count’’ or ‘‘most difficult to

count’’ communities and population groups?

Dr. PREWITT. We are not thus far. Again, I can only say thus far.

We are not hitting particularly complicated pockets, like we can’t

get enough Hispanic enumerators, or we’re not doing very well in

the inner cities. There are always small pockets, but there’s no pattern to suggest that we’re going to not be able to hire the enumerators from those areas as of now.

I was saying to the chairman before the meeting, I, myself, am

trying to understand where so many of these applicants are coming

from.

I just yesterday got some data from the Labor Department. The

Labor Department has a new category in its presentation of the

employment status of the civilian population that it has just added.

It’s, ‘‘Persons who currently want a job but who are not in the labor

market.’’ That is, they don’t meet the test of people who have been

actively seeking a job, which is what puts you in the labor market,

but this is a new category of people actually who would take a job

or are interested in a job but haven’t yet been actively seeking it.

By the estimate from the Labor Department, that totals

4,552,000 people, nearly as many people as are unemployed. That

is, there are a lot of people looking for a job and we think we must

be getting them. There are about 9 million people between the ages

of 55 and 65 who are not in the labor market. We are getting them.

Out of our total applicant pool, more than two-thirds are women

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and more than two-thirds are over 40. So we’re getting into some

kind of recruitment pool that we didn’t expect to get to.

Our last count, we have 70,000 people in our applicant pool who

are non-citizens. We did not have that in 1990.

So we’re putting lots of pieces together. We want to understand

this, ourselves. We want to understand why it seems to be going

well, because if it is we are less likely to run into a problem, so

we’re studying every day what is accounting for the fact that we

are running ahead of schedule.

There may be a particular problem in a particular office in

Racine that I’m simply not aware of, but I can only tell you that

if this were an across-the-board crisis, either for payment reasons

or recruitment reasons, I would have to be sharing that with you.

I don’t want to surprise this committee with something of that

magnitude.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MILLER. We’re going to have another round, and Mr. Ryan

has to go to another meeting, so let Mr. Ryan go first and then

we’ll go.

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. I won’t belabor the point about our Racine, WI, office,

Dr. Prewitt, but I would very much appreciate your timely response to that and hope that this isn’t occurring in other parts of

the country.

I’d like to ask, Mr. Chairman, that some articles be included in

the record.

Mr. MILLER. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. RYAN. What these articles indicate—and I’m just interested

in your testimony where you cite that Boston is the only region

with a low applicant pool. I see the chart in your testimony, but

a couple days ago—I think it was at your press briefing on the

2nd—you said that you were behind in Atlanta and Detroit. In addition, we see a lot of these media accounts that suggest that both

the Navajo and Cherokee Nations are not applying for census employment at the requisite rate.

Can you reconcile these media reports and your discussion at

your last press briefing on Detroit and Atlanta with your current

testimony of Boston as being the only problem?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. The comment I made at the press conference the other day about Detroit and Atlanta, I believe, was actually based upon a different set of data from the data that we put

in attachment A, which is why there is some difference. And, indeed, things move very fast. In fact, I think it is Atlanta where we

were behind our overall goal, and we moved that up by over 5 percent over the weekend.

We have all kinds of things we begin to do when we see that

curve starting to slip. We double or increase the number of recruitment assistants that we have in place. We have the capacity to do

that.

So if somebody is running well ahead of schedule, they’re getting

less recruitment money, less recruitment advertising. Somebody

below, they suddenly get more personnel to do the recruiting and

more advertising money.

So that set of data that I talked about at the press conference

is, one, old data. You know, it is 10-days-old data. The data that

we put before you today primarily focuses on the update leave, because that’s our next major operation, and I thought that’s what

you would be most interested in learning about.

The press reports that one can see, the Window Rock—I looked

at the Window Rock data, for example. By our account, we’re way

ahead of our target in Window Rock for update leave, which is the

big operation that we have in the Navajo Nation, so I can’t explain

that story.

Part of what happens is that, you know, you say, ‘‘We’re halfway

there.’’ We only need to be halfway there. And the press decides,

‘‘My goodness, they’re only halfway there.’’

Mr. RYAN. Yes.

Dr. PREWITT. And so that becomes the story. Or sometimes you

will have a local recruiter or somebody who works for the Census

Bureau who decides to use the press to generate a little anxiety in

the community to try to improve the applicant rate.

So a lot of things are happening in these press stories. All I can

really say is that if we had a national problem right now on the

recruitment front I would have presented to you different testimony. Nothing would be more foolish than for me to come and

sound reasonably optimistic right now about our recruitment efforts and then to have to come back to you a week from now and

say, ‘‘Guess what? It doesn’t look like it is going to happen.’’ I

would much rather err on the side of caution than optimism on

something as critical as this.

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So all I can repeat is that nationally we are ahead of schedule.

With respect to our operations, we are already there—that is, with

respect to the immediate operations—and that certainly includes

the Navajo Nation, which is a big update leave area.

And so I can’t explain that Window Rock press story.

Mr. RYAN. OK. Well, I look forward to your answer on our paycheck problem.

Dr. PREWITT. May I now correct the record? We have received

your letters, and I’m sorry that I did not know that, but we have

received your letters. Both the field office and the region are investigating, and I will have an answer to you by the end of the week

making this very clear exactly what is going on.

Mr. RYAN. OK.

Dr. PREWITT. And I should say that if there were widespread pay

problems, that word would be getting out.

Mr. RYAN. That was my concern. In Racine in our office we have

a 6-week delay. It’s hurting the recruitment. I was concerned that

this was happening somewhere else.

Dr. PREWITT. Sure. That’s understandable. Thank you. Great.

Mr. RYAN. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.

Dr. PREWITT. And not to forget we have all these—you’ve seen

all of our launch books and all of our—what did you use to call

them? Flight schedules.

Mr. RYAN. That’s right. Yes. We’re going to take a look at those

a little later. Thanks.

Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. After you.

Mr. MILLER. OK.

Let me bring up a question about ACE, just briefly. I know

you’re working on it. I know at the meeting last week you mentioned the Janet Norwood Committee. And I know it is still in the

process.

What is the timeline to have a plan ready for us to have a hearing? I don’t want to interfere and have a hearing on it in the middle of the census, but I think the public needs to be aware of it.

I’m glad the meeting, from what I’ve heard about it last week,

it was a very open discussion and all sides were heard and that’s

good.

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. And I know we have a difference of opinion on that

issue, but——

Dr. PREWITT. Well, I think we don’t have a difference of opinion

about the importance of doing an ACE. I think we all know that

we want to do the quality check on the census, and there’s no other

way to do a quality check other than to go back and find out how

well you did, and that’s what ACE does.

I think there is a difference of viewpoint about whether it should

be used to adjust the data, but not the ACE, itself. And I think

that certainly the debate in front of the Norwood Committee, which

was a quite constructive debate, really just focused on that issue,

and not at all focused upon the fact that the Census Bureau should

or should not have an ACE and do dual system estimation.

I think maybe the most interesting thing that emerged in that

discussion, which we are prepared to talk about to this committee

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any time—I mean, I appreciate your sensitivity to where we are,

but a somewhat different set of people could put together material

for this committee if they would like to have a hearing on ACE.

We are where we need to be on that schedule, as well. We needed

to have listed all of our ACE sample blocks. Those are now all fully

listed. We are now doing the check of the housing—the address

work between that and the census file. So we are moving along on

schedule with respect to that operation, as well.

Mr. MILLER. Hiring and opening offices, are you opening

separate——

Dr. PREWITT. That’s much further down the line, and that won’t

happen until the summer.

Mr. MILLER. How many offices will be involved? Do you know offhand, the different staff?

Dr. PREWITT. We actually run the ACE out of our census offices,

not out of our decennial census offices, but our standard regional

offices.

Mr. MILLER. But you’ll be hiring separate staff?

Dr. PREWITT. Not really. We will depend on the most successful

interviewers from the non-response follow-up [NRFU] operation for

ACE. In order to further support independence of the ACE, enumerators will not be allowed to work in the same blocks they were

assigned during nonresponse followup.

Mr. MILLER. What’s the timeline for ACE? When does that

begin?

Dr. PREWITT. ACE could begin as early as late May for certain

LCOs that have completed NRFU. ACE will be carried out on a

flow basis as each completes its work.

Jay Waite will give you the details.

Mr. WAITE. We actually begin our ACE interviewing on an LCOby-LCO basis right after we are sure we’re through with non-response followup. Because of the independence, we don’t want interviewers out there in the blocks trying to do ACE interviewing and

then have the census enumerators that are there doing non-response followup become aware that their block is one that is being

checked, so they would work extra hard or maybe not as hard on

it.

As far as the interviewer pool, because of the independence it’s

possible that people working on non-response followup would also

work on ACE, but they would not work in the same area where

they had worked on non-response followup.

Once they’ve gone to do any work on the ACE, they are not able

to go back and work on any part of the census, because we are trying to make sure we have the independence.

We have an office we call an ACERO office, which is basically associated with our regional census centers. That’s for independent

purposes so that people don’t know in the local census offices where

these particular blocks are.

Associated with each LCO or in the general vicinity of each local

office there’s a small amount of space where supplies are kept,

which has a separate entrance that people working on the individual ACE survey could get to, but that’s physically separate with a

separate lock and a separate entrance from the regular LCO.

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Mr. MILLER. What happens if the mail response rate is significantly below 61 percent? How does that affect ACE? You’d have to

be in the field longer, as you said.

Mr. WAITE. In any individual LCO, to the extent that we did not

get non-response follow-up done on time, we would not be able to

start ACE on time. I mean, we cannot be out there doing both operations at the same time.

Mr. MILLER. Right. There’s a contamination.

Mr. WAITE. So I say it is on an LCO-by-LCO basis.

Mr. MILLER. Right.

Mr. WAITE. If 6 weeks into the operation a particular LCO essentially had their non-response followup done, we could begin doing

ACE in that LCO.

Mr. MILLER. Yes.

Mr. WAITE. But we wouldn’t start in any LCO until the non-response followup for that LCO was completed.

Mr. MILLER. Yes. Dr. Prewitt, I believe that we need a quality

check. I think that’s expected and appropriate and all that. But I

do have serious concerns about both the legality and the statistical

validity of adjusted data by census track or census blocks and the

adjusted set of numbers the way they’re used, their validity.

I think there is a legitimate debate within the statistical community, and certainly within the legal community, on that issue. At

some stage, we will want to discuss it in more detail.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Our country, Dr. Prewitt, is experiencing the lowest unemployment levels in recent history, with an exceedingly tight labor market, yet you seem to be reaching your recruitment goals. I’d like

your comments to further help us understand why you’re able to

reach them, even with this extremely tight labor market.

One of the cities or areas that was the most under-counted last

time was my own great home State and city of New York, and I

just would like to know how the recruitment process is going in

New York. Are there any specific problems? And do you know what

percentage of your recruitment goals you’ve reached in New York?

If you don’t have that with you, you could get back to me later

in writing.

Dr. PREWITT. Well, I can certainly give you the New York region.

I can’t give you right now New York City and I can’t give you your

District.

New York region actually is ahead of target. It is at about 50

percent of its overall target for the general operation, and for nonresponse followup, of course, since there are very few in the New

York region, we have no trouble whatsoever staffing—I’m sorry, for

mail-back update leave operations, we have no difficulty whatsoever meeting that target. So we will clearly be doing the New York

region operations on schedule.

New York City, of course, is a fairly difficult city to count, and

this goes to the issue that Mr. Waite just addressed.

We have to make an LCO-by-LCO decision, and not all LCOs will

be finished in 10 weeks, and New York was one of the areas in

1990 where we had to keep the LCOs open somewhat longer.

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One of the important things we’ve done in 2000 is to look at the

areas which gave us the hardest time in 1990 and compensate for

that in our recruitment effort, in our planning, in our supervision,

and so forth. So it’s not as if we don’t know the areas where we

are going to have the hardest non-response followup effort and that

we haven’t already done what we can to build in and deepen the

capacity for those areas.

Mrs. MALONEY. Yes.

Dr. PREWITT. Nevertheless, these are very difficult areas to

count.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. I understand that next week—and

you mentioned it in your opening statement—that the Bureau will

be kicking off a major new promotional effort for the census 2000

road tour. Can you give us some details? Will there be one of these

road tours in New York? Where are these? You said there will be

10 of them. Could you just elaborate?

Dr. PREWITT. There will be 12, 1 in each region, and each have

an independent schedule, and obviously targeted on the hard-tocount areas. So yes, there certainly will be one in New York, indeed. Without perhaps revealing too much, I can say that the kickoff event, itself, will actually start in downtown, New York.

Mrs. MALONEY. Really?

Dr. PREWITT. The big national launch of it will be on national television at an event that we have reason to believe will be very

widely seen.

Mrs. MALONEY. OK. Great. The paid advertising campaign is

now in full swing, and I understand it is probably too early to have

measured any impact from the campaign, but has there been any

oversight done on the campaign now? What sort of evaluation do

you plan to do on the ad campaign to see, in fact, if it is working?

Dr. PREWITT. Well, we have a fairly extensive evaluation effort

that’s underway. We did a baseline survey under contract to NORC

at the University of Chicago, and then we do a mid-term evaluation, then we do a followup evaluation after the census is over that

tries to gauge the impact of the advertising campaign.

We are exploring ways to even deepen that evaluation work. Obviously, Young & Rubicam, which is represented here today, can

also comment on this. They do their own internal work, as well—

that is, the advertising industry actually tries to study the impact

of ads.

I might say that one of our partners did a nice thing for us. They

were studying the ad campaign for the Super Bowl, and they included a look at the Census Bureau ad, which was mentioned by

both of you. Of the people who watched the Super Bowl, 46 percent

said they remembered having seen the census ad, and of those 46—

which is a huge number of people.

Mrs. MALONEY. That’s great.

Dr. PREWITT. Of those 46 percent, 44 percent said it would motivate them to complete the form, and the rest said it wouldn’t have

effect one way or the other, because maybe they were already going

to complete the form. And no one said that it would act as a deterrent.

And then we asked a third question, or a third question was

asked on our behalf by our partner agency, and that question was:

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Are you the person in the household who is most likely to fill in

the census form? And my recollection is about 75 percent of the respondents were that person.

So we felt very good about that. This did break through. It did

get noticed. And it was motivating.

Mrs. MALONEY. That’s very good news. I was watching television

around the Super Bowl, and they started rating the ads from the

last Super Bowl, so it will be interesting if our census ad is up

there at the top and wins the prize for having had the most impact

on the people.

Dr. PREWITT. I will say, on behalf of Young & Rubicam, they had

obviously not designed that ad to be on the Super Bowl, because

it turned out to be not as expensive to get that ad placement as

it might have otherwise been because of the time that it was chosen, and also they were up against some very tough competition.

That is, you’re up against people who are spending millions and

millions of dollars just to design the ad just for the Super Bowl.

So there was a little hesitancy about the competitive environment

for the ad.

But, nevertheless, the decision was it was worthwhile making

the effort, of course, on behalf of the census, and we were all

pleased at the initial responses that have come back in from the

agency, from the advertising researchers. It does suggest it more

than held its own in terms of the quality of the ad, itself.

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, how many ads will the average American

see? And will people in traditionally under-counted neighborhoods

see more ads than an area that may be over counted?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes. Our estimate is or Young & Rubicam’s estimate is that the typical media consumer in the African American

population, the hard-to-reach African American population, will receive about 122 impressions—that’s television, radio, print, and so

forth—122 different impressions, and the typical Hispanic media

consumer will—I think the number is 105 impressions. Most of us

will probably see in the neighborhood of 20 impressions, because

we’re simply not the consumers of the targeted media that is going

after the hard to count.

So there is a huge difference. I mention that because if you don’t

see a whole lot of advertising you may not think a whole lot is out

there, but it may well be your media consumption habits.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up. Thank you.

Mr. MILLER. The ad that was used was, I think, maybe one of

our favorites of the ones we saw, but that’s tough competition to

run ads on Super Bowl because that’s the Super Bowl of advertising, at least in my opinion, and you see the hurting of cats and the

dog for the Budweiser crashed in the van and all, but actually that

was one of the cuter ones, so it was good to see that one.

I’m glad we have a degree of optimism at this stage. I think we

are going to have another hearing on March 8th, to kind of have

the status and the update. I appreciate that.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ opening statements be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

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Mrs. MALONEY. May I add one more question, because I don’t get

this opportunity often and I want to find out from Dr. Prewitt how

it’s going.

Mr. MILLER. Yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. It sounds like the paid ad campaign is doing very

well. Could you inform us about the public service announcements?

And are you meeting your goals? Has the paid advertising campaign helped increase leverage for the placement of public service

ads with the networks? If I recall, in 1990 we relied totally on pro

bono and public service. If you could give us an overview.

Dr. PREWITT. Just quickly on that, the total dollar amount of

value added advertisement is already $8.7 million. That is, our ad

campaign has been increased by 8.5 percent just on value added.

Just before we came to this hearing we had a marvelous 15 or

20 minutes with Young and Rubicam, where they were showing us

the rough cut of three new ads that are pro bono ads, public service

ads. They feature Ivan Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and Derek Jeter—

that is geographic spread, ethnic spread, of course, these three

very, very key baseball players, in very high-quality ads, delivering

the confidentiality message.

We already know that those ads will be used in the public service

announcement space of NBC, and we are fairly certain other networks—it’s going to be shown, for example—am I saying more than

I should be saying?

Voice. NO. That’s all right.

Dr. PREWITT. I just don’t know what’s public record yet. It will

be shown during the NBA finals, for example. And they will all be

shown on the opening day of baseball season, which, of course, is

a very big media event, and it’s still early enough to try to have

a little bump, even though we’re in early April by then.

These are very creative ads, very powerful ads. We think they

are such good ads that they are likely to be used disproportionately

as public service ads because they are so attractive.

Mrs. MALONEY. The chairman has informed me that he has a

conflict. He has to be at another hearing. I have about five more

questions I wanted to cover. May I submit them to you in writing?

Dr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mrs. MALONEY. And if you would respond, I’d appreciate it.

Dr. PREWITT. Certainly.

Mr. MILLER. In fact, I think I was flying up here the day after

the Super Bowl and the ‘‘USA Today’’ I was reading had actually

a rating of all the ads on Super Bowl Sunday, and we were right

in the center, and with that competition.

Mrs. MALONEY. Should have been No. 1.

Mr. MILLER. Well, we sure weren’t in the bottom 10 which they

listed also.

Mrs. MALONEY. Our cause is No. 1.

Mr. MILLER. That’s right. But we don’t hurt cats. But at times

you think you may be herding cats.

In case there are any other 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 Dr. Prewitt submit written answers as soon

as practical.

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Without objection, so ordered.

I have to run to another hearing. Thank you very much for being

here, and good luck.

Dr. PREWITT. Thank you, sir.

[Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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