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S. Hrg. 111–726 

COUNTDOWN TO CENSUS DAY: PROGRESS 

REPORT ON THE CENSUS BUREAU’S 

PREPAREDNESS FOR THE ENUMERATION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT 

INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

OF THE

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FEBRUARY 23, 2010 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 


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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois 

PAUL G. KIRK, JR., Massachusetts 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT 

INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

JOHN KILVINGTON, Staff Director 

VELVET JOHNSON, Professional Staff Member 

BRYAN PARKER, Staff Director and General Counsel to the Minority 

DEIRDRE G. ARMSTRONG, Chief Clerk 


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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Burris .................................................................................................. 16 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 33 

Senator McCain ................................................................................................ 35 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2010 

Robert M. Groves, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce ..................................................................................................................... 4 

Todd J. Zinser, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Commerce .................... 9 

Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues, U.S. Government Accountability 

Office ..................................................................................................................... 11 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Goldenkoff, Robert: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 71 

Groves, Robert M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36 

Zinser, Todd J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 

APPENDIX 

Questions and Responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Groves ......................................................................................................... 98 

Mr. Zinser .......................................................................................................... 104 

Mr. Goldenkoff .................................................................................................. 109 


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COUNTDOWN TO CENSUS DAY: PROGRESS 

REPORT ON THE CENSUS BUREAU’S 

PREPAREDNESS FOR THE ENUMERATION 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2010 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT,

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES,

AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R. Carper, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Carper and Burris. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome, one and 

all, especially to our witnesses and to those who are seated in our 

audience. 

Today is the continuation of our oversight efforts relating to the 

2010 Decennial Census, one of the few things that is actually 

spelled out in the Constitution that we are required to do, and we 

have been doing it for a long time. 

I have a button that Dr. Groves gave me just a minute ago and 

it says, ‘‘United States Census 2010.’’ The ‘‘United States’’ is in 

very small letters, but ‘‘Census 2010’’ is larger. It is going to try 

to count everybody. It is simple and it is important. Simple, easy, 

and important. In terms of messaging, that is a very good way to 

message. 

But as many of you know, the road to the 2010 Census has been 

anything but easy, and this Subcommittee has held a number of 

hearings on many of the operational and organizational challenges 

that are threatening the success of this particular census. My guess 

is if we went back over time, we would find that none of them have 

been all that easy, and it is even more so given how many people 

live in our country today, how many different languages they 

speak, and how many different kinds of living arrangements that 

we have, and kids in one State and parents and families in other 

States and a lot of people who aren’t related living in the same 

group housing facility. 

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

excellent work of Dr. Groves, his predecessor, Dr. Murdock, and the 


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career professionals at the Census Bureau who have worked very 

hard over the past several months to get the census back on track. 

This year’s census will be by far the most expensive in our Nation’s history, even taking inflation into account. So far, the cost of 

the 2010 Census has been estimated to be about $14.7 billion. That 

reflects an increase of a little over $3 billion in just the last 2 

years. And although there are only 37 days remaining until Census 

Day—is that when April first is?—Census Day, April 1, the 2010 

Census has at long last begun in certain parts of the country. 

The population tally officially began in late January in remote 

parts of Alaska and the Bureau is now revving up for full-scale operations. I don’t know if Dr. Groves will say this in his testimony, 

but the amount of free publicity that the 2010 Census received by 

virtue of kind of the trek, if you will, that was taken through parts 

of Alaska by small airplane, by dog sled, or however folks got there 

to start counting people, a lot of coverage of that, free media, and 

very smart. I said, why are we starting in Alaska, and that really 

kind of answered my question because it is a great way to get the 

message out that we are starting and that every vote—not just 

every vote counts, but we want to make sure that every person 

counts. 

Overall, things seem to be going according to plan. Recruiting 

is—and that is not to say everything is perfect, and we will hear 

about some of the things that aren’t. In fact, we will probably focus 

more on the things that aren’t perfect than the things that are 

going well. But I should point out that a number of things are 

going according to plan. 

Recruiting is on track. There is a silver lining in every cloud. The 

cloud is our economy, the high unemployment. The silver lining is 

there is a lot of talent out there. People are anxious to work on the 

census who 10 years ago may not have had any interest in doing 

that, but today, they are signing up and we have got some very 

good talent coming to work on this. 

But census questionnaires have been printed and are scheduled 

to be mailed out the middle of next month. Local census offices are 

opening and operational, and the advertising campaign is moving 

smoothly into its active phase. 

However, given the sheer magnitude of such an undertaking as 

the Decennial Census, problems are to be expected. Investigations 

performed by GAO and the Commerce Department’s Inspector General have raised concern that the Bureau is behind on testing and 

the full development of some of its key information technology systems. In December, the Bureau conducted two operational tests of 

the computer networks supporting decennial operations which revealed critical defects and IT performance problems. More recently, 

a quarterly report issued last week by the Commerce Inspector 

General noted that the Bureau wasted millions of dollars on workers who were hired and trained last year for temporary positions 

by the Census Bureau but never worked for the agency and others 

who overbilled for travel expenses. 

In addition to the operational issues that I previously mentioned, 

undercounting remains a serious challenge for many communities 

throughout our country. In 2000, about 6.5 million people were 

missed, many of whom were minorities and children, and reaching 


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out to those who are historically hard to count is even more important when you consider that for every one percent of the population 

that does response to the census, we are going to have to spend 

about $85 million extra, I am told, to go door-to-door and get everyone signed up and counted. It is vitally important, then, that we 

do the necessary hard work now so that we can get an accurate, 

cost-effective count in 2010 that will serve us well in the next decade. 

Sometimes people say to me, what can I do to help better ensure 

that kids coming out of our schools can graduate and read and 

write and do math and use technology? How can I, as one person, 

help? And I say, you can mentor. People say to me, what can I do 

in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to do something that is good for the environment and our climate and I say, 

well, you can recycle. And people say to me, what can I do to reduce the budget deficit? I am just one person. What can I do? Well, 

everybody can fill out their census forms and turn them in, and to 

the extent that we do that, for every million people who are counted, that is $85 million less we have to spend to go out and count 

them. 

With that said, I look forward to the expert testimony that our 

distinguished panel of witnesses will provide today. It is my hope 

that today’s proceedings will provide us with a clear assessment of 

the complications facing the Census Bureau, how Congress can 

best partner with the Bureau as it works toward achieving its goal 

of an accurate and cost-effective census in 2010. 

And I want to welcome, again, our panelists, none of whom are 

strangers here. I am going to take just a moment and introduce 

each of them. 

Dr. Robert Groves was nominated by President Barack Obama to 

be Director of the Census Bureau in April of last year. He was confirmed by the Senate in July of last year, an easy lift, as I recall. 

Dr. Groves is an expert in survey methodology and has spent decades working to strengthen the Federal Statistical System, improve 

its staffing through training programs, and keep it committed to 

the highest scientific principles of accuracy and efficiency. Having 

once served as Associate Director of the Census Bureau as a 

child—well, maybe not—Dr. Groves knows how the agency operates 

and what it needs to be successful and to successfully implement 

the Decennial Census and other related programs. 

Todd Zinser serves as our Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Commerce. As Inspector General there, Mr. Zinser leads a 

team of auditors, investigators, attorneys, and administrative staff 

responsible for detecting and preventing waste, fraud, and abuse in 

the vast array of business, scientific, economic, and environmental 

programs that are administered by the Department of Commerce 

and its 13 bureaus. Mr. Zinser holds a Bachelor’s degree in political 

science from Northern Kentucky University and a Master’s degree 

in political science from Miami University. Is that Miami University in Oxford, Ohio? 

Mr. ZINSER. Yes, sir. 

Senator CARPER. Yes. As a Buckeye, I am always happy to welcome another Buckeye, and especially having a guy here from the 

University of Michigan at our table. 


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1The prepared statement of Mr. Groves appears in the Appendix on page 36. 

Robert Goldenkoff is the Director of Strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office, where he is responsible for reviewing the 2010 Census and government-wide human capital reforms. 

Mr. Goldenkoff has also performed research on issues involving 

transportation security, human trafficking, and Federal statistical 

programs. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in political 

science and Masters of Public Administration degree from the 

George Washington University. 

Normally, we would swear you guys in and give you that oath, 

but since you have such honest faces, we will forego that this time 

and just go right to your testimonies. We indicate that we would 

like you to keep your testimonies to 5 minutes. 

But welcome. Dr. Groves, why don’t you go first? 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT M. GROVES,1 DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS 

BUREAU, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

Mr. GROVES. I am delighted to be here. It is great to see you 

again, Senator. I think the most important thing that I should 

start with is to reiterate what you said. The 2010 Census has indeed begun. We began in a little village in Alaska called Noorvik, 

30 miles north of the Arctic Circle. We have to do Alaska first because many of the native villagers will disperse for hunting and 

fishing activities during the spring thaw. 

Second, our advertisements are on the air. These are necessary 

to notify the American public that the census is coming and that 

we urge them to participate. 

There have been a lot of things that have happened since we 

were last reporting to you and your Subcommittee. We have opened 

all the local census offices. They are up and running and staffed. 

As you mentioned, recruiting for field operations is really a wonderful story this decade for the Decennial Census. 

What you didn’t note is that we have just last week gone over 

the 200,000 mark in terms of partnership organizations that are 

working with us on a volunteer basis to get the word out among 

their constituents—— 

Senator CARPER. How does that compare with previous years? 

That seems like a lot of organizations to be part of the partnership. 

Mr. GROVES. It was almost half this amount last decade. 

Senator CARPER. So basically, you doubled. That is good. 

Mr. GROVES. It is really amazing, and they are all over the country, small neighborhoods, big multinationals, and all sorts of 

things. 

We have nearly 10,000 Complete Count Committees. These are 

local committees often appointed by local officials that help get the 

word out in their city and locale. 

We are involved in two operations already. One is Group Quarters Advance Visit. This is a new thing we are doing this decade 

to help improve the counts in large institutions like prisons, assisted living facilities, and so on. 

And then just last week, 10 million letters went out to houses 

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So a lot has happened. There are challenges that remain. I want 

to focus on those, with your permission. And before I talk about 

technical aspects, I want to talk about two things that have received some attention. One, hiring procedures, the background 

checks that we do on our staff, and then, two, the 2010 Census 

media campaign. 

Since we last met with you, we have put in place additional procedures that we believe will assure both Congress and the public 

that we will be taking every measure possible to protect the American public during the phase where our census takers will visit individual households. Let me go through those a bit. 

Two steps are the same as what we did in the 2000 Census during the application process. Each applicant is required to accurately disclose information about any conviction, imprisonment, 

probation, or parole in the last 10 years. Failure to disclose this information will disqualify an individual. 

We then submit to the FBI database name, date of birth, Social 

Security number, and gender to do a record check in the FBI data 

set. This was done in 2000, as well. But in 2010, we are doing an 

extra couple of steps. For the 2010 Census, we will conduct a separate fingerprint check against the FBI database. We did this in a 

large operation before I got to the Bureau called Address Canvassing in the summer of 2009. 

We learned in that first use of fingerprinting that some folks did 

not generate readable fingerprints. They tended to be older employees. They tended to be women. We have beefed up training. We 

worked with the FBI and OPM and we are beefing up the training 

of the fingerprinters and we are also using some FBI-recommended 

lotion to help the ridges of fingers stand out for older people to get 

readable prints. If we still have unreadable prints after this initial 

effort, we have just made the decision to reprint using electronic 

equipment that will be stationed in each of the 500 local offices. 

This is a decision we made over the last few weeks. 

Senator CARPER. Would you just explain what you just said 

there? 

Mr. GROVES. Yes. One thing that is clear is that a set of electronic equipment on which you can take fingerprints gets a better 

read rate from those who have very worn-down ridges on their fingers. 

Senator CARPER. Those older women you were telling us about. 

Mr. GROVES. I didn’t say that. I believe they were older people 

and they also tended to be women—— 

Senator CARPER. Probably some older men, too? 

Mr. GROVES. Yes. Actually, people who have worked in manual 

labor tend to suffer from this problem. We will take the first set— 

we take two sets of fingerprints using cards, normal ink. If we can’t 

read those, then we will ask the staff member to come in and take 

electronic fingerprints. We think we can get the unreadable rate 

down to about 10 to 12 percent given that, and that is an improvement over our experience in Address Canvassing. 

Senator CARPER. And for the 10 or 12 percent that we still don’t 

get a good read on their fingerprints, what do we do with those? 

Mr. GROVES. The news on those is that based on our applicant 

pool, about 16 percent of the applicants when we submit their 


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name and other identification generate an FBI record. There is 

some sort of history connected to their name and Social Security 

number there. When we do the added fingerprints—— 

Senator CARPER. And so they fall out in many cases? 

Mr. GROVES. We look to see exactly, and I will say in a minute 

exactly how we handle those cases. 

When we then fingerprint the people who pass the name check— 

those are the only ones we fingerprint—there is a little over a 99 

percent chance that they will pass the fingerprints, too. We pick up 

about 0.5 percent on top of that 16 percent that have a criminal 

history. So even though the fingerprint check does pick up many, 

the biggest bang for the buck is the name check itself. 

For the 2010 Census, we have sharpened the criteria for disqualifying applicants with prior criminal histories. We will now 

automatically disqualify any applicant whose screening indicates 

prior convictions or a pending charge for certain categories of 

crimes, such as murder, sex offenses, robbery, voter fraud, and 

other crimes that suggest a threat to public safety or to the integrity of the census data. 

In addition, those who have been convicted or have charges pending involving crimes of dishonesty, burglary, theft, and vandalism 

are disqualified from employment, except when the person conclusively demonstrates that he or she doesn’t present a threat. We will 

also use the e-Verify process to confirm employment eligibility. 

Let me note that the safety of the American public and of our 

staff is of paramount concern to me during this process. I fully support these unprecedented improvements in the screening of applicants. 

Let me turn to the Integrated Communications Campaign. We 

are buying paid media because the 2000 Census taught us that 

strategy succeeded in reversing a multi-decade-long decline in response rates. It worked. 

In 2007, the Bureau contracted with a professional advertising 

firm that retained 12 subcontractors to research and design this 

program. We are advertising in 28 different languages and across 

eight major audiences. Based on experience and the research that 

preceded this effort, we are focusing our advertising on so-called 

hard to enumerate or hard to count populations. 

When we enter into negotiations for media buys for national and 

local outlets, they follow industry practices of seeking added value 

from the media outlets. Examples of this term ‘‘added value’’ for 

the 2010 Census campaign include additional broadcast spots provided for free, celebrity endorsements, or mentions of the census in 

programming or through public service announcements. 

In all, there were 2,100 requests for proposals that were issued 

for this media campaign, with over 61,000 media outlets responding, and each outlet engaged was asked to provide some added 

value. As of late January, the census team has negotiated almost 

$30 million in added value from media outlets. This represents 

leveraging the taxpayer money on media by about 23 percent. We 

expect that will get up to about 25 percent. So in addition to paying 

for this, we are getting 25 percent extra value from these added 

value negotiations. 


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In a perfect world, I would note that where every resident was 

completely aware of the constitutional underpinnings of the census, 

there might not be a need to spend taxpayer money on advertising. 

I get that fact. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a world. The 

last census proved with little doubt among the profession that the 

value of paid media, it demonstrated that value because of this reversal of the decline in response rates. So we spend advertising 

money in an attempt to save salary costs on Non-Response FollowUp activities. 

Now, let me move to more technical topics. My full testimony reviews a lot of internal challenges. I want to focus on two or three 

that I am most concerned about. One has to do with a variety of 

IT systems. We have been conducting load tests of key components 

of the software that we will rely on to manage field operations. We 

ran a load test on December 3. It was partially successful. We 

weren’t able to test one component of the system. We found defects 

in other parts that we were testing. This involved a national network, about 8,000 people in 400 offices banging on the system 

under a scripted set of protocols. 

One glitch in that test prevented us from testing the payroll system. We discovered there is a network problem that we have now 

fixed and we are probably going to add hardware to that payroll 

system as a solution. Solutions were developed to address each of 

the glitches we found in the December test, and then we did another one on December 15. 

The results of that test gave our technical folks and the independent assessment group that I appointed in August or so the belief that the basic infrastructure had the capability of handling the 

peak network traffic, but problems remain that I will review right 

now. 

One has to do with a piece of software called the Paper-Based 

Operational Control System. What is this thing? This is a set of 

software that allows us to do the Non-Response Follow-Up activity, 

most importantly. After we receive all the questionnaires from mail 

returns, we will send out census takers. That system allows us to 

make assignments, keep track of the progress, and so on. This was 

a late add to the development when the handheld machines were 

chosen not to be used in 2008. It has been on the High-Risk List 

since that moment. It remains on the High-Risk List. 

Let me tell you where we are on this. It is going to be released 

in three phases. Release one has been released. It is in production, 

supporting the activities of Remote Alaska Enumeration Group 

Quarters Advance Visit that is going on that I mentioned and a 

couple of other things. The performance of the system at this point 

is not taking the load that we would like. 

Senator CARPER. Say that again. What do you mean by that? 

Mr. GROVES. The current performance of the system in the offices 

in the production of these activities looks to be such that it will not 

accept the load that we are going to need to give it in a month or 

so. So we are working on the performance capabilities of the system right now. It is satisfactory for what we are doing right now. 

We are executing the programs that we need to. But if we needed 

to ramp up today to the level we are going to have to ramp up in 

May, it wouldn’t support that, is our estimation. So that is a key 


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focus of everyone working on it, and it will probably be partially 

a software solution and partially a hardware solution. 

The second iteration, the second release of the software was released Friday, on schedule. We are now getting the first glimmers 

of what happens when it is in production. Part of that will not be 

released—the Non-Response Follow-Up support won’t be released 

until about March 22, about a month before we need it. So we are 

still working on that. 

Then there will be a third iteration that will be released later for 

operations that are needed further down the line. 

This remains a high-risk development, as I anticipated at our 

last hearing. I reported to you that this was one of my key concerns. It remains so, primarily because of the compressed time that 

is available to develop the systems and the hard deadlines we face. 

We can’t move any of our deadlines. 

So to aggressively mitigate and manage the risks, we have a 

steering committee that represents all the stakeholder divisions. A 

key component of the decision process that we are executing right 

now is a set of trade-offs. What are the core functions of the system 

that we need for the operations in May through July, to make sure 

those go? What are non-core functions that we can have workarounds? That is the process we are using right now to manage 

this, and we want to make sure the right folks are at the table to 

contribute to those decisions and make sure they are wise ones. 

This is really a daily management oversight task. We have appointed a new group based on the advice of this external assessment team that we have brought in that is helping watch the process to make sure deliverables day by day stay on schedule. If there 

are any impediments to getting something done, we get rid of those 

and fight through the bureaucracy. 

Finally, I want to talk about cost estimation in the Non-Response 

Follow-Up phase. I promised you and the Subcommittee that I 

would do a scrub of this and we have done that. We finished our 

work. We focused on the Non-Response Follow-Up phase. It was 

budgeted at roughly $2.7 billion, the May through July operations. 

I wanted to make sure that in addition to what was a top-down 

way of estimating the cost, that we did one that was bottom-up. We 

did that bringing in expertise from field operations. 

We learned from them, from their viewpoint on the process, what 

were the sources of uncertainty. We had to estimate through that 

process the fall in response rates over the decade. Our surveys are 

losing about 5 percentage points over the decade of cooperation 

rates. The effect of the short form versus the short and the long 

form, the effect of the replacement questionnaire, the effect of the 

bilingual form. We also needed to re-estimate the vacancy rate, 

given the foreclosure issues in the country. 

We did all of that, and then what we did next was to simulate 

about a thousand different scenarios, different combinations of 

things that might happen. When we finished that exercise, it was 

a comforting result, I can tell you. I feel much more comfortable 

that we are budgeted at a level that allows us to successfully complete the operations. 

One indicator of that is that only 9 percent of these thousand different scenarios, a perverse set of combination of events—very low 


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1The prepared statement of Mr. Zinser appears in the Appendix on page 53. 

return rates, bad productivity rates, higher vacancy rates—would 

produce—would be necessary for us to go into our contingency 

funds on Non-Response Follow-Up. So I feel better about that. 

Let me conclude by noting that the pace is picking up. There are 

hundreds of important tasks that will be completed across all components of the Decennial Census program. Folks in Suitland and 

throughout the regions are working very hard, night and day, to 

make sure this is a good census. There is a lot to do and the pace 

is quickening. 

I stated at the beginning of my testimony something that I believed when I entered this office and I still believe. The biggest risk 

to the 2010 Census is the uncertainty posed by the American 

public’s response to the questionnaire, and we need your help and 

your continued help. We thank you for what you have done already 

to encourage everybody living in the United States to participate 

in this census to make it successful. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks very much for that testimony. 

My staff and I met yesterday with the IG from the Commerce 

Department, Todd Zinser, and it was a very helpful conversation. 

Thank you for doing that yesterday. 

And Dr. Groves, I just want you to know, a guy who has some 

roots in Ohio actually said some very nice things about someone 

who has some roots in Michigan. You should be comforted by that. 

Not ready to rest on any laurels, but he was very complimentary. 

Mr. Zinser, please proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF TODD J. ZINSER,1 INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

Mr. ZINSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for inviting 

us to testify today on the Census Bureau’s progress and preparation for this year’s decennial count. 

Last week, we released our most recent quarterly report to Congress on the status of the 2010 Decennial Census. While our report 

and our testimony today discuss serious challenges currently faced 

by the Census Bureau, we are mindful and appreciative of the extraordinary efforts being made by a very dedicated staff at the Census Bureau to achieve a successful outcome. I would like to summarize our quarterly report in my testimony in four points. 

First, the development of the Paper-Based Operational Control 

System remains a significant risk area. The Paper-Based Operational Control System is a critical computer system for managing 

numerous decennial operations, including the Non-Response Follow-Up operation. That operation is estimated to cost well over $2 

billion and is projected to require approximately 600,000 census 

takers to visit almost 50 million households during a 10-week period in May, June, and July. 

We found that the development and testing of the system continues to suffer from setbacks that will reduce functionality and require the development of work-arounds to manage the Non-Response Follow-Up operation. The testing of the system is continuing to reveal critical defects. Schedule delays have also hinVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Dec 01, 2010 Jkt 056842 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56842.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT

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dered the development of training manuals and technical support 

guides. 

Our second point in the quarterly report concerns the Decennial 

Application Load Test carried out by the Census Bureau for each 

of the various computer systems that will support the Decennial. 

The tests attempted to simulate the expected demand on its computer systems. They showed that the networks and devices were 

able to successfully handle peak loads, but there were performance 

and functionality problems with two of the more critical systems, 

the Paper-Based Operational Control System, which I have mentioned, and the Decennial Applicant and Personnel Payroll System. 

Our third point concerns budgeting and cost containment. We 

found that while Census reports staying within its budget during 

the most recent quarter we reviewed, spending among the local 

census offices remain a concern. We examined the 25 percent cost 

overrun experienced by the Bureau for its address canvassing operation last year and found wide disparities in wages and mileage reimbursement in some of the local census offices. For example, when 

we examined mileage costs incurred by local offices for the quality 

control operation for address canvassing, we found that costs 

among the offices ranged from less than 1 percent of their budgets 

to 878 percent of their budgets. 

The 25 percent cost overrun for address canvassing indicates a 

problem with the original budget estimate, a problem managing 

the containment of costs, or perhaps some of both. In contrast, the 

Bureau reports that it spent only 59 percent of its budget for group 

quarters validation. Inaccuracies of this magnitude in estimated 

budgets, combined with wide spending variances among local census offices, indicates significant weaknesses in the Bureau’s budget 

estimation and cost containment capabilities. 

Which leads to our fourth and final point concerning the estimated budget for Non-Response Follow-Up. Census has projected a 

revised cost estimate of $2.33 billion for the Non-Response FollowUp operation, which is $410 million less than the prior estimate. 

However, this is partially offset by an estimated 40 percent increase of $137 million for the Vacant Delete Check operation, 

which is now projected to cost $482 million. 

In addition, the final costs of the Non-Response Follow-Up operation remain largely dependent on the mail response rate, which 

is a significant uncertainty. We would also add the unknown impact on operation costs of the Paper-Based Control System with reduced functionality and performance. 

In brief, although much of the Bureau’s plan is on track, the efficiency and accuracy of the Non-Response Follow-Up operation are 

at some risk because of the development problems with the PaperBased Operational Control System and final Decennial costs remain uncertain. 

That concludes my summary, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy 

to answer any questions you might have. 

Senator CARPER. Good. I have some, and again, thanks so much 

for the work that you and your colleagues have done in the IG’s 

office. We look forward to asking you some questions. Thank you. 

Mr. Goldenkoff, welcome back. Thank you. 


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1The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff appears in the Appendix on page 71. 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT GOLDENKOFF,1 DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today to provide an update on the Census Bureau’s readiness for the 2010 Census. 

As you know, just over 5 weeks remain until Census Day. The 

decade-long build-up to the Nation’s largest peacetime mobilization 

has come to a close and the complex and costly business of data 

collection is now underway. 

The road to Census Day has been a rocky one, fraught with operational setbacks and cost overruns. The hurdles the Bureau has experienced to date, including weaknesses in the Bureau’s IT systems 

and uncertainty over the ultimate cost of the census, which is now 

estimated at around $15 billion, led us to designate the 2010 Census a High-Risk Area in March 2008. As requested, I will update 

the Subcommittee on the state of the census, paying particular attention to, first, the rollout of key IT systems; second, the steps the 

Bureau has taken to revise its cost estimates; and third, the extent 

to which critical enumeration activities, particularly those aimed at 

hard-to-count populations, are on track. 

Senator CARPER. Let me interrupt just for a second. Would you 

just go back a couple of sentences? You indicated a cost of, I 

think—— 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I said around $15 billion. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It is about $14.7 billion. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks so much. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. The Bureau’s readiness for a successful head 

count is mixed. Mr. Chairman, it is deeply troubling that with Census Day right around the corner, key IT systems, notably the 

Workflow Management System, this Paper-Based Operational Control System (PBOCS) that we have been talking about, which is essential for the Bureau’s field operations, and DAPPS, the Personnel 

and Payroll Processing System that will be used to pay more than 

a million temporary workers, continue to be plagued by performance problems. 

When the Bureau held a critical load test this past December, 

the Workflow Management System experienced log-in problems, 

slow performance, and communication issues, while the Automated 

Personnel and Payroll System offered from server problems and 

sluggish performance. The Bureau is going to great lengths to address these issues, taking such steps as performing additional tests 

and purchasing new hardware, but the Bureau needs to move 

promptly. Just weeks remain before the systems need to support 

peak operations. 

In addition, the Bureau revised its cost estimate from $2.7 billion 

to $2.3 billion for Non-Response Follow-Up, the largest and most 

costly field operation, where census workers go door-to-door to follow up in person with non-responding households. However, the 

Bureau’s cost analyses are not complete. According to the Bureau, 

it continues to reexamine the costs of two other Non-Response Follow-Up related operations, so at this point, estimates of the ultiVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Dec 01, 2010 Jkt 056842 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56842.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT

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mate cost of Non-Response Follow-Up in the Decennial Census are 

still uncertain. 

Other functions, however, are faring better. Key enumeration 

procedures are generally on track, past problems are being addressed, and some activities aimed at improving the participation 

of hard-to-count groups are more robust compared to similar efforts 

during the 2000 Census. For example, the Bureau plans to fingerprint employees to better screen its enormous temporary workforce. 

However, as you know, in earlier operations, a number of fingerprint cards were unreadable, which prevented the FBI from conducting a complete background check. In response to this issue, 

among other actions, the Bureau plans to improve training procedures on how to take fingerprints. 

Efforts to boost response rates are also more aggressive compared to the 2000 Census. For example, the Bureau has increased 

staffing for its Partnership Program, which is an effort where the 

Bureau engages government and community leaders to gain their 

support for the census. 

Likewise, the Bureau’s plans to mail a second replacement questionnaire to census tracts that had low or moderate response rates 

in the 2000 Census should help enhance participation in 2010, as 

will plans to hand-deliver an estimated 1.2 million census forms in 

areas along the Gulf Coast that were devastated by recent hurricanes. 

Moving forward, it will be important for the Bureau to quickly 

identify the problems affecting the key IT systems and test the solutions. Further, given the complexity of the census and the likelihood that other glitches might arise, it will be important for the 

Bureau to stay on schedule, monitor their operations with appropriate performance metrics, and have plans and personnel in place 

to quickly address operational issues. 

Now, these operational considerations aside, I want to stress that 

the Census Bureau cannot secure a successful enumeration on its 

own. The public must also fulfill its civic responsibility to mail back 

their census questionnaires in a timely fashion. As we have already 

discussed, according to the Census Bureau, each percentage point 

increase in the mail response rate saves taxpayers around $85 million and yields more accurate data compared to information collected by enumerators during Non-Response Follow-Up. 

The bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is that in a few weeks, a key determinant of the success of the 2010 Census will be both literally 

and figuratively in the hands of the Nation’s residents. 

This concludes my prepared remarks and I will be happy to answer questions that you might have. 

Senator CARPER. Great. Thanks so much. 

Let me just go back and try to get a handle on a couple of points. 

One is the question in my own mind of how many temporary employees are we talking about hiring, like at the peak? I don’t know 

if it is April, May, or June. At the peak, how many additional temporary employees will we have on the payroll? 

I have heard 600,000. Mr. Goldenkoff just said over a million. 

Mr. GROVES. Well, I think the reason it gets confusing is that for 

this entire fiscal year, it will be about 1.2 million jobs that we will 


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have filled, and they go in and out. So right now, we are doing an 

operation that will close out pretty soon. 

Senator CARPER. Some of the people that might be hired, you 

brought on board, say, in February, might not necessarily be still 

there in March, April, or May? 

Mr. GROVES. Right, and some of them—— 

Senator CARPER. And vice-versa? 

Mr. GROVES [continuing]. Will be rehired for a new job that they 

will continue with the Bureau into July. The peak will be the May 

1 through July 10 time period, where we will have between 600,000 

and 700,000 people, and they will be the census takers who will 

visit individual households. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thanks for that clarification. 

I am going to ask Mr. Zinser and Mr. Goldenkoff just to tell us 

what you think may be the—I bring this up in your shoes and in 

our shoes here on this side of the dais—what the most significant 

improvements that you have noted in the performance of the Census Bureau and their operation as we approach this count. What 

are you most encouraged about, each of you? Maybe give us two or 

three examples. And then give us two or three examples of what 

you believe we should continue to be concerned about, as you are. 

So, first of all, the good news, and then the things we ought to 

continue to be concerned about and keep our eye on. That is the 

question. 

Mr. ZINSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think one thing that we 

have consistently commended the Bureau for is taking on a more 

sophisticated or rigorous risk management approach to the Decennial. They have got a team that has been analyzing risks, coming 

up with mitigation efforts, and developing contingency plans, and 

in our report, we comment on that and we have looked at the four 

plans that they have completed and think that they have done a 

good job there. 

I think that the other thing that probably carries over from one 

census to another that is a strength of the Bureau is their workforce. They have a highly dedicated workforce. You go out and meet 

the workforce in the local offices, they are very focused. They know 

their territories and they are committed to making this a successful 

census. 

On the downside, I think the IT problems that we have all talked 

about, and Mr. Goldenkoff alluded to in his statement are far and 

beyond the most troubling aspects of this Decennial, going back to 

the decisions that had to be made on the hand-held computer and 

the problems that continue to plague the Bureau. 

Senator CARPER. Give us one more. 

Mr. ZINSER. One more negative? 

Senator CARPER. Example of things to be troubled about or concerned about as we go forward. 

Mr. ZINSER. Well, I think the cost controls. I think that, on the 

one hand, I think that cost controls are always an issue. I think 

they are especially so in these times, but I would like to see more 

done from the senior levels of the Census Bureau to emphasize cost 

controls within their local offices. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Good. Thanks. Mr. Goldenkoff, first, the 

good news, and then—— 


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Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I would agree with everything that Mr. Zinser 

has said and I would add to that. Very broadly, I think culturally, 

we would like to commend the Bureau for being much more open 

and much more transparent than it has been. GAO has had a relationship with the Census Bureau for a number of years. Certainly, 

I have been involved with the Census Bureau since 2000 and we 

have been very impressed with the outreach with Dr. Groves and 

some of his immediate predecessors over the last few years, and 

certainly since 2008, the Bureau has been much more open to outsiders, and outside advice. Dr. Groves and I, we get together on a 

regular basis to discuss not only issues with the 2010 Census, but 

also planning for the 2020 Census. 

I think one of the things that is so important is the first step in 

dealing with a problem is recognizing that you have one, and I 

think that the Census Bureau is much more open to that, particularly in dealing with outside audit organizations. So that is definitely a plus I want to get out there, just the cultural change. 

I would also say the ability to develop work-arounds very quickly 

when they have identified problems. The Census Bureau has a lot 

of expertise on board that they can quickly get to the heart of a 

problem and develop a solution quickly, and so we commend them 

for that. 

Senator CARPER. OK. And the things that—some of the aspects 

of the census that keep you up at night or should keep us up at 

night? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. IT issues would be No. 1, particularly with 

PBOCS. What we have seen is that they are facing people 

issues—— 

Senator CARPER. Paper-Based Operational Control System? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That is correct. 

Senator CARPER. I just want to thank you, while I think of it, 

when I read the testimony of, I think it is Dr. Groves, there are 

a lot of acronyms in the testimony. I just want to thank you so 

much for not mentioning those. [Laughter.] 

There was one sentence, or two sentences with five acronyms. I 

am just so grateful that you didn’t use that sentence. 

Mr. GROVES. Should I say, OK? 

Senator CARPER. You may, as long as you spell it out. [Laughter.] 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. So, as I said, the operational control system, 

that is the nerve center of the census, the brains of the census, and 

there are some people issues there, staffing issues, hardware 

issues, software issues, scheduling issues, and so that is definitely 

something that is keeping us up at night, and I know it is certainly 

keeping the Census Bureau up at night, as well. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Back to you, Dr. Groves. You have heard 

the good and the not-so-good. You don’t have to respond to the 

good. You can, if you want. But focus on the concerns especially 

with the IT problems, the concerns that were raised with respect 

to the Paper-Based Operational Control System. You have talked 

about it already, but just come back and give us some reason to 

feel more assured, and also talk with us about—the point was 

made on focusing on cost controls. I think the comment was, like 

to see some more top-down concern or focus on cost control. 


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Mr. GROVES. On the IT side, I think there are—actually, we discussed this in the last hearing, I believe, how IT activities within 

a large government agency can be handled efficiently and how you 

can stay on the cutting edge and do developments that are needed 

in a way that are spending the taxpayers’ money wisely and get in 

production in a timely fashion. Some of these are really big issues 

that deserve a hearing of its own, probably, at one point. 

On this particular software development, I think it is important 

to separate pieces out and look at them separately. There is a system for the payroll and personnel processing that I think is logically viewed as a separate issue. It is running on its own network, 

a separate network from others. It was taken really lock, stock, and 

barrel from our contractor in 2008 when the decision was made not 

to continue with the handhelds and placed in Suitland. So it is a 

rather unique computer network. 

Part of the problems in the load test that we found was there 

were basically glitches in that network so that when people were 

accessing and sending requests to that network, the network was 

actually idle. It wasn’t even getting those requests. That was fixed 

with some approaches to the operating system. When that is up 

and running, its performance is still not satisfactory. So on that 

component of the problem, we will be installing some new hardware starting March 1, and the hope and belief of the technical experts, both working on the team at the Census Bureau and brought 

in from the outside, is that particular problem has a good shot of 

being solved with that operating system fix and the added hardware. 

The Paper-Based Operational Control System is a separate issue, 

I think. That is new software being developed using this philosophy 

of agile programming that allows you to write separate little modules in one week cycle time. You do a little widget. You insert it 

in the overall whole. You test it. It is compatible with everything 

else that was in there before. 

We are entering a phase now that often happens, in my experience in software development. You have the initial release and production. Whenever you put something in production, users find 

things that they don’t like, things that don’t work that everybody 

thought worked, but with a combination of commands don’t work, 

and those begin to—those are communicated to the software development group and so they have a list of fixes that is adding up as 

users find these things. At the same time, that same team is developing new functions for the next release. So there is a competition 

for that precious resource of programming skills, and the management procedures we put in place is to deal with that. 

Now, the one good thing that both of my colleagues mentioned 

about the staff of the regions is a component of the solution at this 

point in time, given where we are, and that is decisions to remove 

a function that someone wanted originally from this software and 

to have a work-around for it, some manual operation. 

It is comforting to me, as I travel around the country talking to 

our regional folks, that they are quite confident they can handle 

this. In fact, on many of the functions we are talking about removing from the software to get time to fix the existing functions, they 

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ally. We know how to do that. It would have been nice to have this 

computer assistance, but we can live without it. So that is the good 

side of that. 

The wisdom that is required in this process is to make those 

tradeoff decisions in a way that costs and efficiencies aren’t hurt, 

but we give the programming staff time enough to do the functions 

that are really core. And as I said, this is a high-risk enterprise. 

What I can promise all of us is that it has the full attention of 

management up and down the line. But this is a high-risk enterprise. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thank you. Thanks for raising those points 

and for your response to them. 

We have been joined by Senator Burris from Illinois. It is great 

to see you and thanks so much for joining us and for your attendance at many of our hearings. Senator Burris, you are recognized 

for a statement, if you like, and then questions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BURRIS 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the distinguished panel, I must say that having met with Director Groves recently on the various issues, I hope that things are moving as we 

had discussed, Director Groves, during our private meeting, especially in the area of the minority, underserved, or undercounted 

communities. I mean, that is a major concern of mine across the 

Nation. 

Just for the record, I want it to be known that I was able to hook 

up the Chicago operation with Stan Moore and we had a major 

event there to kick off the necessity for having everybody counted. 

It was a very successful event. We had over 2,500 individuals who 

can contact or reach out to various sections, primarily in the African-American community in Chicago. And, of course, these are influential people that have access not only throughout the State, but 

throughout the Nation, in trying to make sure that some of our underserved and undercounted communities would be counted. 

They really have not, to my estimation, Mr. Groves, seen the 

value of what that census count would do for that community. Not 

only does it take care of the congressional redistricting issues and 

all that, but they don’t understand how it does relates to the redistribution of funds for various governmental programs. So we have 

been trying to get that message out and I am just hoping that will 

take place. 

What I am also hearing, though, is a lot of backlash on the commercials that have been run and the expenditures. What are you 

all hearing about the amount of money that you are putting out in 

terms of trying to educate the voters—I mean, educate the citizenry 

that they should mail back that form when they get it? 

Mr. GROVES. Well, we hear both praise and criticism, as you 

might imagine, Senator. 

Senator BURRIS. Especially on the Super Bowl commercial? 

Mr. GROVES. The Super Bowl commercial did appear to be noticed by several people in the country, both positively and negatively. I think the way we think about this is, first of all, my personal opinion on this is I wish we didn’t have to spend a dime on 

advertising. I wish that every resident of this country knew that 


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the census was planned for this April and they couldn’t wait to get 

their questionnaire in the mail. 

We have been doing surveys of the American public over the past 

few months, and other people are doing them, too. There are some 

shocking results there. So there was a Pew Center survey that was 

done just a few weeks ago. It showed among people 18 to 29 years 

old, many of whom are established in their first household by 

themselves, they are out of the parents’ household—— 

Senator BURRIS. Thank God. [Laughter.] 

Mr. GROVES [continuing]. The 31 percent of them didn’t know 

what this word ‘‘census’’ meant. And then the interviewer was instructed to say, well, a census is a count of everyone in the country. 

It is done every 10 years to reapportion the House of Representatives. Now that I have told you what it is, have you ever heard of 

that? And that 31 percent goes down only to 17 percent. 

So we have a massive burden. You and I and everyone in this 

room know that the census is coming. We have known it for years. 

We know what it does and what it is about, but there are segments 

of our population that don’t know anything about the census. And 

so we have to get the word out to them somehow, and this campaign that we are mounting has a lot of partner organizations that 

are trusted voices in communities all around the country. We have 

200,000 of them now—it is a wonderful accomplishment, I think, 

on the part of the country—to get the word out. 

But in the 2000 Census, we learned that if we did paid media, 

that worked. In the 1990 Census, we relied on Public Service Announcements. What happened was we made a lot of them, but they 

aired at three o’clock in the morning. Not very many people saw 

them. And so for the first time in 2000, we reversed a long-term 

trend of declining participation because of paid advertising. 

The way I think about this is this communications campaign is 

going to spend about a dollar per person in the country. If that dollar per person encourages them to return the questionnaire, we 

save for each person about $25 to measure them by sending somebody out. So that is the trade-off decision. If we can spend a little 

money to save a lot of money, this makes a lot of sense. And in 

the 2000 Census, that advertising campaign more than paid for 

itself, many-fold over. 

The Super Bowl ad cost us 2.1 cents per viewer. That was the 

biggest audience in the history of this country. A hundred-and-thirteen million people saw that ad. Now, we can debate whether that 

was a good ad or not—— 

Senator BURRIS. Or whether they really related to it in terms of 

the census—— 

Mr. GROVES. That could be true, but in terms of—— 

Senator BURRIS [continuing]. Rather than a part of something 

about football. 

Mr. GROVES [continuing]. Cost efficiency of getting the message 

out, it is hard to beat that. If we took out an ad in the Washington 

Post, it is about five cents per person. 

Senator BURRIS. Yes. 

Mr. GROVES. So I don’t know a lot about advertising. I don’t 

know what makes a good ad or a not-good ad. I do know that purVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Dec 01, 2010 Jkt 056842 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56842.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT

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chasing on the Super Bowl is a pretty cost efficient way to get the 

word out. 

That is a long-winded answer. I am sorry. 

Senator BURRIS. No, I appreciate that, because that did generate 

a few more questions. I see that I am a little bit over my time here, 

but I was just concerned about the overall cost in terms of the 

budgeting. You did have some of it in your remarks in terms of 

per—so you based that on about 310 or 320 million in the population is what we are going? And then what would it cost to do the 

difficult part of the door-to-door? Has that been budgeted and projected as to how much that is going to cost us? 

Mr. GROVES. Yes. It is hard to get the variable costs on this, but 

the number that seems to be most defensible is for every one percentage point of households that do not return the questionnaire, 

and we will have to go out and visit those, we will spend about $85 

million. 

Senator BURRIS. Yes. 

Mr. GROVES. So we are spending about $300 million—— 

Senator BURRIS. In total. 

Mr. GROVES. So if we can get four percentage points out of this 

through the advertising, it pays for itself. 

Senator BURRIS. What about the various activities after the census is over and there has to be an undercount, or an assessment 

of the undercount. Do you all get involved in that? Sometimes there 

is litigation involved. What type of plans do you have to try to head 

some of that off? 

Mr. GROVES. Well, as we all know, this decade, our design is 

guided by a Supreme Court ruling before the 2000 Census that 

said that the reapportionment will be done based on the counts 

that we are getting. So all of our counts right now are focused on 

getting the best counts we can. Every fiber of our being is focused 

on getting the word out and encouraging people to return the questionnaire, and then we will do non-response follow-up. 

We, indeed, will do an evaluation of how well we did. There will 

be a large sample survey that will see whether—to estimate what 

proportion were missed, what proportions were double-counted. 

The results of that won’t be ready until 2012 because it is a very 

complicated statistical matter, but we will have that. So the country will know through that and through other ways of knowing how 

well we did. 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will wait for a second round. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Senator. And again, thank you for 

being a faithful participant in these hearings and for adding your 

voice and presence. 

Senator BURRIS. I am very much interested in this count, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Yes. All of us should be. 

Senator BURRIS. Absolutely. This is crucial, especially to the underserved communities. 

Senator CARPER. Sure, it is. 

In the testimony that we received a bit earlier, Senator Burris, 

we heard that participation of partnership organizations in this 

census as compared to 10 years ago, we are witnessing about alVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Dec 01, 2010 Jkt 056842 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56842.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT

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most a doubling of the partnership organizations that are active 

and involved this time as compared to a decade ago, which speaks 

very well. 

There was some discussion of the paid advertising that is being 

used, and I was pleased to hear that the paid advertising is focused 

on the folks in our country who are the least likely to respond, the 

hardest to count. So that makes sense. You have some money to 

spend for advertising, less—rather than spending the money on the 

people we think are almost sure to be counted and to stand up and 

be counted, the idea of saying we are going to invest our money 

where it is going to be real hard to drag people out, it is sort of 

like getting people out to vote. We had get out the vote. This is like 

a get out the count kind of deal. 

And the other positive here was just in terms of talent pool. We 

have some really smart, able people to work in the census, and we 

have had those before, but I don’t think ever, maybe at least in recent years, to the extent that we have now. We have got some 

great talent. My hope is, with that kind of talent on board and people who are used to working hard and being productive, that we 

might actually surprise ourselves in their ability to get things done. 

I want to ask a question, but I think you wanted to say something. 

Senator BURRIS. Yes. I just wondered, on the advertising side, 

which I probably should have raised with Mr. Groves, in the advertising, have they really zeroed in on minority radio stations or minority TV stations with the advertising to make sure that there is 

a proportional commitment to these media outlets and get it—believe it or not, I know it is a little expensive, but some of the local 

newspaper ads, and you can probably get word out to your district 

offices to look for those weekly newspapers that you can put some 

advertising in that we might reach these communities that we are 

speaking of. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Good. 

I want to ask a question of Dr. Groves, if I could, just about out 

of this 600,000 to a million people that we have on board at the 

census, new people, temporary employees—we will say it is 600,000 

people—how many of those folks will actually be enumerators and 

actually out there counting on a daily basis? 

Mr. GROVES. That figure that I gave you, it is probably 680,000 

or so, that is the enumerator count. That is the census taker count. 

Senator CARPER. If I were to look for the months, say, April, 

May, June, would you say that on an average for those 3 months, 

we have 600,000 people counting as enumerators? 

Mr. GROVES. As enumerators, right. Yes. They will be trained the 

last week of April. They will start work May 1, generally. 

Senator CARPER. I tried to do some sort of like back-of-the-envelope math just to see how many folks they would need to count. Let 

us say they were counting—enumerating, if you will—20 days a 

month. And let us say they counted each of those 600,000 people, 

counted five people each day. Five people a day, 20 days in a 

month, that is 100 people. And we will say we have 600,000 people 

counting and each of them count in a month 100 people. When I 

multiply 100 times 600,000, I come up with 60 million people a 

month that the enumerators were able to be counting. If they are 


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doing that over 3 months, that would be 20 days a month of counting five people a day, that would be about 180 million people over 

3 months at 60 million a month. 

Now, five people a day doesn’t sound like much for an enumerator. A hundred a month, working 20 days a month, doesn’t 

sound like a whole lot, either. A hundred-and-eighty million people 

sounds like—that is more than half the people we are going to 

count. But yet we know that about two-thirds of the people are 

going to respond anyway. Maybe, we will say, about a third will be 

non-responders, so those are the folks we have to go out and count, 

which would be about 100 million people. 

Why do we need 600,000 people a month over 3 months to count 

roughly 100 million people? 

Mr. GROVES. Yes. The figures from 2000 are about 40 million 

households, and they are, on average, like, say, 2.3 people per 

household, so that is very close to your 100 million people. 

This is tough work, first of all. It is work that is mainly nights 

and weekends work because you have to call on houses when people are at home. The houses you are calling on are houses that, for 

one reason or another, chose not to return a questionnaire. And 

then they are also calling on a lot of vacant houses. The vacancy 

rate this decade is different than it was in 2000. 

When we call on a vacant house, we don’t know it is vacant. All 

we know is we sent a questionnaire to this address and nothing 

came back. So we have to make really quite sure that when we call 

on a house, it is not just that people are—and no one answers the 

door—they are at work or somewhere else, but truly, no one lives 

in that house. That takes multiple visits. 

It is also true on the occupied houses that it takes multiple visits. We actually allow as many as six different visits to a housing 

unit. 

I can tell you that from all the things we know about measuring 

the American public, the houses that are most difficult to contact 

and get cooperation from are those that are susceptible to the differential undercount we have seen historically in the country. So 

you could, indeed, do Non-Response Follow-Up a lot more cheaply, 

but what will happen is you won’t measure those houses that are 

so difficult to contact. 

And so even though it is fantastic to imagine that it takes this 

much effort and that you can’t just rip out five a day—— 

Senator CARPER. It is five people. It is not five houses, but five 

people. 

Mr. GROVES. That is right. It is, indeed, the fact—most of these 

people, by the way, are working about 17 to 19 hours a week, so 

it is not a full-time job because there aren’t that many hours that 

are really peak hours to call on houses. 

Senator CARPER. I am going to ask Mr. Zinser and Mr. 

Goldenkoff, any comments on my questioning and the response we 

heard from Dr. Groves? 

Mr. ZINSER. Well, Senator, I think one of the points that—or one 

of the things you were putting your finger on was how efficient we 

can make the operation and how efficiently we can use the 600,000 

employees that we hire, and I think that is the key point and I 

think that is why, to go back to what we have talked about here, 


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why this operation control system is so important, because to get 

maximum efficiency out of that workforce, we need that kind of 

management information. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Mr. Goldenkoff. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Following up on non-responding housing units 

is an extremely tough job. During the 2000 Census, we went 

around with enumerators all over the country. We could see for 

ourselves how difficult it is. Right off the bat, you are dealing with 

non-responders, so those are people who already rejected the Census Bureau once. They haven’t returned their mail questionnaire. 

And so it sometimes requires multiple visits. 

And on top of that, when you add some of the difficulties of going 

into certain neighborhoods, because of gated communities, other aspects, it makes it difficult to get into a neighborhood. Sometimes 

the Census Bureau has to have folks to help them get into an area, 

to help facilitate access to an area. The country is a big place. In 

more rural areas, you spend a lot of time in your car driving from 

one house to another. It is not just going door-to-door, but the next 

housing unit you go to could be miles away. 

And so for all those reasons, the amount of time goes up and the 

efficiency tends to go down. But I will say this. Everybody we have 

observed was extremely diligent and extremely conscientious about 

their task. 

Senator CARPER. Well, that is encouraging to hear. 

I don’t know, Senator Burris, if you have the kind of experience 

in Illinois that we do in Delaware. Delaware is a small State. We 

tend to be, at least in the northern part of the State, more densely 

populated. The southern part is a half-mile, a mile between the 

houses or farms. 

But we do a lot of door-to-door get out the vote efforts in our 

State around election time, or just campaigning prior to elections 

to identify who is at home. You have a voter registration list. It 

doesn’t always marry up to who is in the home. People come and 

go. Homes are foreclosed on. Folks grow up. Kids grow up and 

leave. They no longer live with their parents. There are all kinds 

of changes. 

And one of our challenges has always been to maintain the voter 

files so that on election day, who lives in a particular house and 

if they are registered and the idea is to try to get out the folks who 

are more likely to vote for you or your side. 

So we have a little bit of experience with—this is not enumerating, but in a way enumerating, but for not just to count people 

but actually find out who does live there, who is registered, and 

who is more likely to vote. And we know it is not easy. But I would 

say just the idea of doing five a day doesn’t sound like a heavy lift. 

I am encouraged by what Mr. Goldenkoff has said about actually 

seeing what is involved in this work. But the focus on cost control, 

which has been raised as an issue here, obviously, it is something 

that Dr. Groves is mindful of and we just need to continue to be 

mindful of that. 

Senator BURRIS. Mr. Chairman, in the urban communities or the 

suburban communities, door-to-door sometimes works. But in the 

Chicago community or the major markets, people don’t open their 


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doors, even when you try to do door-to-door canvassing for political 

situations. 

I remember I had a little issue, and I live in sort of a middleclass neighborhood in Chicago. Some people had turned the street 

sign the wrong way and they made it a one way for one block, and 

we had three one-ways going west. And so I had to then try to go 

around and turn it back around, and I walked four or five blocks 

trying to get my neighbors with my recognition, and they all knew 

me, and to even get them to come to the door, to even open the 

door—and, of course, some were home and they open the door and 

saw it is me, then they would respond. 

But I found that very difficult in the metropolitan areas for those 

persons to open up their doors to anybody. They could be at home 

and the doorbells would ring or they would knock on them and 

they will not open the doors for anybody. Some of that is security 

purposes. Some of it is just, I don’t want to be bothered. But in the 

old days, we used to do that. Precinct captains in Chicago would 

knock on your door. You could knock on doors, pass out literature, 

and people would open the door. That was in my early days in politics. But I have seen during my days that to have changed substantially. 

Let me raise a couple other points, if I may. 

Senator CARPER. Before you do, I remember being invited to Illinois to campaign door-to-door with a candidate for office and—— 

Senator BURRIS. Was this in Chicago? 

Senator CARPER. We were going door-to-door and finding a hard 

time to get people to actually come to the door and open it. A couple of times, you knew somebody was home and on occasion people 

would say, ‘‘Who is it?’’ and I was finding it very difficult to get 

people to open their door. I would say, like, my name. Nothing happened. And then I would say, Roland Burris, and it just opened 

doors. It was just pretty amazing how it worked. [Laughter.] 

Senator BURRIS. Yes. That is how it—— 

Senator CARPER. Imagine their surprise when they opened the 

door. [Laughter.] 

Senator BURRIS. Mr. Chairman, I just had another couple of 

points here because I heard about the tough door-to-door, and we 

also now have a lot of foreclosed homes. And you won’t be able to 

locate some of these people because you don’t know where they 

have gone. Hopefully, you can find them. They have moved into 

rental units or somewhere. I mean, are they living with a parent 

or a friend or something? So that has to also be taken into consideration. 

Second, I just know that we in Illinois in our General Assembly 

have introduced legislation that states that the census would readjust the count for incarcerated persons back to their residence, not 

in the areas where the facility is. And we have several prisons in 

Illinois that were built in downstate, and 70 to 80 percent of those 

residents in those prisons are from Chicago. Those residents will 

count those prisoners as being a part of their community for census 

purposes and they will then try to get the revenue based on those 

calculations. I hope that we will look at that legislation—we are 

talking about in Illinois—and say that those persons are to be 

counted where they are going to go back to the community and put 


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a drain on that community rather than being incarcerated and 

more than likely are not going to settle, for instance, in my home 

town of Centralia. My home town of Centralia has about 14,000 

people in it. Well, in the prison, I forget what the prison population 

is now, but if they go and count those 800 or 900 prisoners, then 

that is going to make us have 15,000 people in Centralia and 90 

percent of those are from Chicago. So Centralia will benefit. Chicago will not get the benefit of those people coming back. 

So, Mr. Groves, can you do this adjustment without legislation 

and they can make some type of adjustment in the count? 

Mr. GROVES. This concern that you raised about where to count 

prisoners, we have heard from others. And we also realize that one 

of—a wonderful quality control process, we have to have outside 

people review counts, could use similar data. So for the first time, 

we will make available publicly, early in the process, in time to 

handle for redistricting purposes at the State level, counts of what 

we call group quarters. This would include prisons, but also dormitories and assisted living facilities, things like that, down to the 

block level. 

It is not exactly what you were saying. It isn’t attempting to 

identify what the home place of a prisoner is. But for the first time, 

States will have available to them during the redistricting process 

the ability to identify prisoner counts down to block levels and use 

that however they wish—— 

Senator BURRIS. That data is very readily available through 

State sources, of where that last residence was for that person. I 

don’t see why that cannot be made an adjustment. My hometown 

has 14,000 people and there are 900 in the prison. Of those 900, 

800 of them are from Chicago. Then it is not a 14,900 population 

that is in Centralia. It is a 14,000 population with probably another 50 of them coming from Decatur or Rock Island or Rockford 

or even from out of State. 

So I hope that there is some—even in this instance, because this 

is a complaint that I have heard about, the urban markets and how 

our smaller communities are taking advantage of these situations 

and the urban communities will need the money when these people 

return back to, for various allocations, and they are being shortchanged. 

So I am hoping that we can look at the adjustment, and I don’t 

think this will take very much of—even if the census is taken, it 

shouldn’t be very costly. You just adjust the numbers. Once the address is determined within that census tract area, you have 50 people in Centralia from that tract area, then you add that to the Chicago population, or the Rock Island population, or the Kankakee 

population, or the Joliet population. OK? And I am speaking for 

primarily the prisoners. 

Mr. GROVES. Yes. 

Senator BURRIS. Of course, assisted living, the people are in the 

nursing homes and they are pretty close to home in those assisted 

living facilities. 

Mr. GROVES. It might be good to describe how we do counts within prisons, because it is a special operation. We have something 

called an Individual Census Report. It is the preferred method of 


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measuring within censuses because each person incarcerated would 

fill out their own form. 

In some prisoners, for security reasons, both security of our folks 

and others, the prison management says, we will take data off of 

our administrative records, the prisoner records themselves, and 

we do that when we are required to by the prison officials. 

Our findings are—and I don’t know the Illinois record system, 

but I do know nationally, our findings are that across the States, 

the records miss large portions of the attributes we are trying to 

measure on the individual census form and so we greatly prefer to 

have people fill them out. 

So one of the problems that we face nationally with the issue 

that you raise is that States vary in the record systems of prisons, 

and what might be easy for one State to put in place to identify 

what the home of the prisoner is is very difficult for another State. 

That is our problem at the national level. 

We do one thing pretty well at the Census Bureau, I think, and 

that is after each census, we reevaluate what we call residence 

rules. Where do we count different people? One of the topics of 

great interest going forward for the 2020 Census is to use records 

systems more efficiently because that would reduce the burden on 

the American public and the cost of the data collection. 

So I believe that we must evaluate this placement, where do we 

place prisoners, along with how do administrative records consider 

different households. What does the address on the records system 

really mean going forward? And so I think we will. 

But unfortunately, we are not measuring right now—for your 

purposes, Senator, we couldn’t do the adjustment that you are asking for because we are not measuring the home of an individual 

prisoner the way we are going about—— 

Senator BURRIS. Yes, but when that prisoner is counted, Mr. 

Groves, it is added to that community. 

Mr. GROVES. We follow with prisons the same rule that we follow 

for the vast majority of others, and that is we count you in your 

usual residence. Now, what do we mean by that? This is actually 

in the Census Act of 1790 that gave us this rule, and that means 

where people usually eat and sleep—— 

Senator BURRIS. Sure, and for the prisoner, you are eating and 

sleeping in prison. 

Mr. GROVES. That is why we count them where—— 

Senator BURRIS. But that is no benefit—the community is benefiting by that in various ways, and one way is totally unfair to the 

community. We have 40,000 prisoners in Illinois. Sixty percent of 

them are from the Chicago community. You are talking about 

24,000 individuals that are undercounted in Chicago and overcounted in those downstate communities. That is a number, an impact on that urban area, and we have already got urban problems 

as it is. 

Mr. GROVES. And what I am saying, with this new tabulation for 

redistricting for the first time this decade, every State can decide 

how they are going to treat their prisoner population, whether they 

are going to keep them in the rural areas where they—— 

Senator BURRIS. So that is a state-to-state decision? 

Mr. GROVES. According to how we do redistricting, it is—— 


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Senator BURRIS. No, but then can that data be turned over to 

you and it be transferred to the particular urban area where these 

people are really housed? Will you make that count adjustment? 

Mr. GROVES. If the State had those data certified in a way that 

the redistricting process found acceptable to that State, then they 

could do it themselves. We are not involved in redistricting, as it 

turns out. We provide the information that allows people at the 

State level to—— 

Senator BURRIS. Now, I am not talking about redistricting. I am 

talking about the count of that head. I am sure these numbers 

might be used in redistricting, but they are also used for distribution of HUD funds and other various dollars and that goes into the 

count of what Centralia has. In order for Centralia to get the grant, 

it is based on what you turn in for the population of Centralia, as 

I understand it. 

Now, if I am wrong in that area, please correct me. But I think 

that you all ought to take a very hard look at how even nationwide, 

with over some two million individuals incarcerated, how they are 

being counted. And I think this is an issue that the census ought 

to take up in consideration and not just leave it to the States because you are getting a false report on the community from which 

this person is from because Centralia in no way is being—there is 

no use of the city streets. There is no use of the—because the State 

is paying for the water that Centralia provides it. So they are benefiting, and now they benefit unjustly because of the prison population. 

And I think that is something that you ought to look at specifically, not dealing with whether it is apportionment, not dealing 

with whether or not it is dealing with the redistricting. This is an 

area that we ought to look at for an accurate census count. Where 

does that prisoner actually have a home and where is that person 

going back to, and it will be a drain on that community as opposed 

to leaving Centralia and coming back to Chicago. I mean, that 

ought to be looked at, Director. I would suggest you do that. 

Mr. GROVES. Well, I can promise you, going forward, we will. But 

I also must, in all honestly, note that from our data themselves, 

that won’t be possible for the 2010 Census to—— 

Senator BURRIS. GAO, have you all done any analysis—I mean, 

any comment in that regard? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. We have done some limited analysis, and we 

don’t have a position on where prisoners should be counted. It is 

Congress’ prerogative to work that out in consultation with the 

Census Bureau and the States. 

What I do want to point out, though, that there are some operational issues and feasibility issues that need to be kept in mind. 

One is that administrative records, as Dr. Groves has already mentioned, there is a lot of variation from State to State in the quality 

or completeness of administrative records. So that has to be considered. 

Another issue that needs to be taken into account is that there 

is, at least at present, no definition of a person’s home on record. 

I mean, it is one thing to say, well, we should put them back where 

they came from. That is where they should be included in the census count. The issue there is, if someone has been in prison for a 


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number of years, well, how do we know? Is that person going to go 

back to that location? Does that location, if they say, oh, their last 

previous residence before being incarcerated was 123 Main Street, 

does 123 Main Street even exist anymore? Was it a rental property 

that now somebody else is living in that same unit? So it would 

create—somebody would have to go out and verify that address still 

exists. 

Senator BURRIS. Well, certainly there is going to be some work 

in keeping records on it, but that person comes out of that jurisdiction, he is not going back to that jurisdiction, because the census 

is only done every 10 years. So there is going to be a big turnover 

in the prison population in 10 years, and some of those people are 

going to be released during that 10-year period. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Well, some will be, some won’t be. Some are 

in Federal prison and won’t even be going back to that State where 

they are housed. They are going back to some other State. 

Senator BURRIS. Well, I was thinking of this going to the 40,000 

that are in Illinois State prisons, as your example. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. OK. 

Senator BURRIS. You all could make a study by using Illinois because there are quite a few small communities where we have built 

in the last 20 years, they built 20 new prisons in Illinois. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Right. 

Senator BURRIS. That is a prison a year. And they have been 

populated. Sixty to 70 percent of the urban areas, and then most 

of those people are five or—and for the lifers, that is another issue 

you have to deal with. Some of them might be getting life in those 

prisons, and then that would be difficult. But most of those prisoners are time certains and 80 to 90 percent of them are going to 

be released. We just had 1,100 of them released because of budget 

cuts, and where did they all head back to? They all headed back 

to Chicago. And it is a major drain on the urban community when 

that happens and the local community is taking advantage of that 

and that person is not even there anymore. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Right. 

Senator CARPER. I am going to ask you to go ahead and respond. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It is something that requires further study. As 

I said, GAO doesn’t have a position on it, but what we do have a 

position on is just what needs to be considered would be the operational and feasibility issues and it is something that will require 

further study, because as Dr. Groves said, it is really too late in 

this census cycle to get down to that level of detail. 

Senator BURRIS. I think that adjustments could be made, even in 

this cycle. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thank you, sir. 

I have a couple of short questions, and then if Senator Burris has 

anything else that he would like to add, he is welcome to, and then 

we are going to call it a day. 

One of the things I will be asking at the very end is anything 

that any of you want to add yourselves that comes to mind as a 

result of this conversation. Be thinking about that, but you will 

have that opportunity. 

Dr. Groves, we talked a little bit about this already, but could 

you give us some idea of how well recruitment and hiring are 


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going, specifically with respect to bilingual communities? We all 

know not everybody in this country speaks English. Some speak it 

not very well. But there are 100 languages that I suppose are spoken in this country, easily. But I think you focus on maybe a dozen 

or so languages in terms of the ability to enumerate and to count 

folks. 

But how are we doing in terms of hiring folks that are able to 

go and be effective in bilingual communities? Is the Census Bureau 

having difficulty attracting enough eligible and qualified bilingual 

enumerators to work in these communities, and if so, are there any 

languages for which recruitment is lacking? If you are having certain problems trying to fill the slots that are needed for folks that 

can speak, maybe, less commonly spoken languages, what is the 

Census Bureau doing to address those difficulties? 

Mr. GROVES. That is a great set of questions. I think the first 

thing to note is that we attempt to hire people from the neighborhoods in which they will be given assignments. So we want people 

who know the neighborhoods they will work in. This places a geographical constraint on the recruitment process. 

Nationally, we are in fine shape on counts. We are progressing 

better than we feared. When you go down to local areas, there are 

problems. It does appear to be the case for some groups, bilingual 

folks are the target that we want in the neighborhood. We are having some problems in rural areas greater than in urban areas 

through the recruitment process. I think that has been true in 

prior decades, as well. 

We are not, I don’t think, in trouble on this. When I talk to the 

regional directors, they are concerned about bilingual recruiting, 

but remain optimistic that we will hit our goals. 

So the bilingual skills and the rural recruiting are the toughest 

areas for us right now, but we are actually—this is not what keeps 

me awake at night. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Any steps that you all have taken at the 

Census Bureau to address either the bilingual or rural recruitment—— 

Mr. GROVES. We are advertising in in-language newspapers, 

some of the weekly newspapers that Senator Burris talked about, 

and we are advertising on in-language radio in areas. So there are 

a lot of census ads when we are after bilingual folks that use the 

media of that language as a way to do it. 

Senator CARPER. I have seen some press—this is a change in the 

focus here a little bit, to ‘‘hard to count.’’ But we have seen some 

press reports that some Hispanic advocacy groups have launched 

a grassroots campaign calling for a boycott of the census unless immigration laws are changed. In my view, it is not, in the big picture, not an enlightened position to take, but nonetheless. But 

what strategies does the Bureau have in place to combat fears on 

the part of some immigrant communities that participating in the 

census will be harmful to them? 

Mr. GROVES. We spend a lot of our time talking about this and 

working on this issue. It is an issue that arises in every census 

where the decade that preceded it had waves of immigration, people coming to this country from other countries with different culVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Dec 01, 2010 Jkt 056842 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56842.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT

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tures and different relationships to their central government are 

special educational targets for us. 

I think there are several things that we have learned over the 

decades that are appropriate in meeting this challenge. One is although I can go throughout the country giving speeches about the 

safety that is involved in participating in the census, the fact that 

you can’t be harmed, while that is necessary, it is not sufficient and 

reaching out to these partner organizations is really key. 

We are so gratified by the organization of partner groups in a lot 

of in-language subculture groups, especially new immigrant groups. 

I was in Minneapolis just a few days ago where they have a large 

Somali population. You wouldn’t imagine it. You wouldn’t automatically associate that with Minneapolis. This was a long set of 

discussions. They have the concerns about whether those who 

might be undocumented need to fear that enforcement agencies 

would get this data, and we have a wonderful thing to say in this 

country about that, that we have very strong laws that protect that 

information from getting in the hands of any enforcement agency 

at the local, State, and national level. 

Repeating that was good, but when the Somali leaders of Minneapolis said that, it had different meaning than when I said it, 

and so the fact that we are using in-language ethnic media and 

using the leadership of those communities helps. 

We have hired partner specialists. The stimulus money allowed 

us to quintuple the number of partners specialists we have. We 

took them from the communities that were hard to count. They 

have their own network and ties, and that has been a wise decision 

in retrospect, I think, for us. 

So it is a challenge that never goes away. It is a question that 

arises all the time. Will I be harmed by participating in the census? 

We have a wonderful answer to give in the country, but all of us 

need to give that answer in a unified way. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Staying on this point again for hard 

to count, in the past, I am told that the Census Bureau has worked 

with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to refrain from 

conducting raids during response follow-up. The thinking, I presume, is that if one arm of our government is actively arresting 

people believed to be here illegally, they and their friends and families might be less interested in helping another. 

What is the status of the Bureau’ outreach to immigration officials on these issues, if you will? 

Mr. GROVES. I believe the Secretary spoke to this, and I also did. 

We can’t, as one Federal agency, ask another Federal agency to 

stand down on their mission, nor will that happen. Secretary 

Napolitano, in response to a query from one of the Catholic 

bishops, noted that the intent of her agency at this time was to not 

focus on individuals but to focus on other ways to fulfill their mission and that statement addressed some of the issues of concerns 

of these groups. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Mr. Zinser or Mr. Goldenkoff, do you have 

anything you want to add on hard to count? You don’t have to, but 

if you have anything that you want to add. Good. 

The last issue I want to raise, cost overruns. Dr. Groves, last 

week, the Commerce Department IG issued a report noting that 


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the Census Bureau paid millions of dollars to temporary employees 

who never performed any field work and others who overbilled for 

travel. Let me just ask, how would you like to respond to the IG’s 

findings? And as you begin to gear up for the upcoming field operations involving significantly more people, as we know, what types 

of internal controls do you plan to put in place or have you put in 

place to avoid these types of cost overruns in the future? 

Mr. GROVES. Actually, the IG report focused on an operation that 

was done in the summer of 2009 and the results of their investigation on that. We testified with regard to that overrun in September, October—I have lost track of time. We learned from that 

overrun various things. One is that we are dealing in 2009–2010 

with a different labor market. We over-recruited, clearly, anticipating the labor market of 2000 and the attrition that was built 

into that kind of labor market. So we learned that lesson and we 

have adjusted our hiring and recruiting going forward. 

Second, I learned as a new director that the cost estimation process that led to the staffing decisions could be improved through updating components of the cost model, and that is what I testified 

to with regard to Non-Response Follow-Up. Although it has been 

reported that we have a $2.3 billion cost estimate, we actually have 

a thousand cost estimates on Non-Response Follow-Up because 

there is no one cost estimate. We haven’t yet seen what is going 

to happen that will produce the actual costs. As we see those 

events fall into line, we are going to narrow our range of cost estimates, and we will be completely transparent on this. I will tell you 

this as soon as we know it. So cost estimation is another thing that 

we are doing. 

I also want to point out that the address canvassing was an operation that was unique in the experience of the Census Bureau. 

Those handhelds had to work. There was great concern. There are 

probably testimonies in front of this Subcommittee that the 

handhelds weren’t going to work at all. So our field folks were really quite concerned that they had enough staff to do the work. That 

is a natural concern of those involved in production processes that 

will never go away. 

I think our job is to make sure we are as cost efficient as possible, and I care deeply about this. It is notable that the two big 

field operations we have had since then have been on time and on 

budget or under budget. 

Senator CARPER. That is encouraging. 

Mr. Zinser, Mr. Goldenkoff, anything you would like to add on 

cost overruns? 

Mr. ZINSER. Thank you, Senator. I think in our report, we did try 

to put it in the right context, that these kinds of inefficiencies 

occur, and the message was with an operation coming up that is 

four to five times greater than what you just went through, attention to these areas is very important to cost controls. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thank you. 

Senator Burris, are you all in, as we say in the game, all in? 

I promised Dr. Groves, Mr. Zinser, and Mr. Goldenkoff, if you 

wanted to take a minute and just add a closing comment, this 

might be a good time to do that. If you don’t want to, then I will 


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wrap it up. Go ahead. Mr. Goldenkoff, anything you wanted to add 

or take away? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. No. I think that we are all in general agreement here on what the issues are, so in terms of anything new or 

dramatic that no one has ever realized before. 

What I would like to stress, though, is that the census, as large 

as it is, as complex as it is, it is an inherently fragile operation. 

It doesn’t take much to derail it. So that is why, moving forward, 

there is really not a whole lot that can be done at this point, a new 

operation that no one ever thought of, a new action that no one had 

ever thought of before. So much is already being done. 

And so that is why what the Bureau needs to focus on going forward now that the data collection has started is real time metrics 

of these different operations so that they could see very early on, 

almost like an intel operation, intel on a ground operation, which 

essentially is what the census is, making that analogy to the military, what is working, what is not, and taking early and direct action to keep the operations on track. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. Mr. Zinser. 

Mr. ZINSER. Thank you, Senator. I think I would just say a couple of things. One is that things are going to go wrong. There are 

going to be problems. There have been problems every Decennial, 

and the trick is the management being able to respond to those 

problems. Especially when you have 600,000 employees, you are 

going to have problems. I think it is necessary for the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce, our office, GAO, the Congress, to all kind of try to see those problems and get on top of 

them. 

And the second point, I would just go back to Senator Burris’s 

concern about the prison populations. I think it is difficult to make 

any changes to the way the Census Bureau does things right now, 

but I am wondering if the focus could be on the formula that is 

used to distribute some of these Federal funds, if there couldn’t be 

some algorithm or some factor that can be used that takes into consideration how the populations of various cities are skewed based 

on other data concerning prison populations and attack the formula 

rather than try to change the way the Census Bureau is doing 

things. That would be my two cents on that issue. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thank you. Dr. Groves. 

Mr. GROVES. Well, I want to make a plea to all of us to do everything we can over the next few days to tell friends and neighbors 

that this thing called the census is coming, that it is a chance for 

all of us to participate in a building block of the democracy, something that the founding fathers envisioned and told us to do every 

10 years and we have done obediently since then. 

And that for those who are worried about the Federal deficit and 

Federal spending, this is the one thing, as you noted, Senator, that 

we can all do to save money. We really can. All you have to do is 

fill out that Census form and return it. If you are a private person 

and you don’t want people knocking on your door, you can avoid 

this simply by taking 10 minutes to fill out this form. All of the 

benefits of the census derive from that simple act, that 10 minutes 

that we are asking people to take, and now is the time, I think, 

for all the leaders of the country in a unified voice to say, come on. 


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Let us do this. Let us do it together. Let us count ourselves and 

reapportion the House and get all the benefits from an accurate 

count that we can through our own participation. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. 

Well, I want to conclude again by thanking you for joining us 

today. I want to conclude by thanking each of you for the work that 

the agencies or the entities that you represent have put into our 

efforts to date on this Decennial Census. 

This is certainly important work for our country and one that 

has been important work literally since our founding as a Nation. 

It is in some ways a lot more difficult than it used to be. But in 

some ways, it is easier because we have some better tools to enable 

us to attack these challenges. 

I want to just underline what we see our role as here in the Senate and in this Subcommittee, in particular. We have an oversight 

role to make sure that the Executive Branch is doing the work that 

they ought to be doing. We also have an obligation to try to find 

ways that we can be helpful, and to the extent that you need help, 

we have tried to be there to be supportive. If it is appropriations, 

if it is funding, if it is other resources that need to be brought to 

bear, we are trying to make sure that those are. 

I want to thank the IG and I want to thank our friends at GAO 

for being critical when it is appropriate, but I think, without exception, being constructively critical. There is a difference between 

those two approaches, so thank you for always being constructive. 

And for other things that Senator Burris and I and others on this 

Subcommittee and our full Committee that need to be doing in the 

days ahead, we certainly want to do that. We certainly have the 

opportunity through our own public comments to encourage people 

to stand up to be counted and to be proud of this opportunity, this 

constitutional obligation and opportunity. 

The hearing record will be open for 2 weeks. My colleagues who 

are not here will have the opportunity to submit their questions in 

writing. We would ask that you respond promptly. 

I want to thank both our majority and our minority staff for their 

work in preparing for this hearing and for everyone who has participated in it. Senator Burris. 

Senator BURRIS. I just think what Dr. Groves just said, that we 

should get that on tape and make a commercial out of it. That was 

a hell of a commercial that you just made for the people to fill out 

the census. 

Senator CARPER. That is great. 

All right. With that having been said, this hearing is adjourned. 

Thank you so much. 

[Whereupon, at 4:19 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 


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