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49–639 PDF 2009

S. Hrg. 111–41 

LESSONS LEARNED: HOW THE NEW 

ADMINISTRATION CAN ACHIEVE AN ACCURATE 

AND COST-EFFECTIVE 2010 CENSUS 

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 

FIRST SESSION 

MARCH 5, 2009 

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

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(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 PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois 

MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

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 

BRYAN PARKER, Staff Director and General Counsel to the Minority 

MONISHA SMITH, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

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

Senator McCain ................................................................................................ 3 

Senator Burris .................................................................................................. 4 

Senator Coburn ................................................................................................. 5 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2009 

Barbara Everitt Bryant, Ph.D., Former Director, U.S. Census Bureau ............. 6 

John Thompson, President, National Opinion Research Council ........................ 8 

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

Office ..................................................................................................................... 10 

David Powner, Director, Information Technology Management Issues, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office ...................................................................... 12 

Lawrence B. Brown, Ph.D., Chair, Committee on National Statistics, National 

Academy of Sciences ............................................................................................ 13 

Robert B. Hill, Ph.D., Sociologist and Former Chair of the Advisory Committee on African American Population, U.S. Census Bureau ......................... 14 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Brown, Lawrence B., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 78 

Bryant, Barbara Everitt, Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38 

Goldenkoff, Robert: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49 

Hill, Robert B., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 95 

Powner, David: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 68 

Thompson, John: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44 

APPENDIX 

Hon. Vincent P. Barabba, Former Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement ................................................................................................... 33 

Letter to Thomas L. Mesenbourg, Acting Director and Deputy Director, U.S. 

Census Bureau, dated February 19, 2009, from Mr. Brown ............................ 82 

(1) 

LESSONS LEARNED: HOW THE NEW 

ADMINISTRATION CAN ACHIEVE AN 

ACCURATE 

AND COST-EFFECTIVE 2010 CENSUS 

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2009 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT,

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICE,

AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:31 p.m., in room 

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

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Carper, Burris, McCain, and Coburn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. The Subcommittee will come to order. We welcome you, one and all. I am delighted that Senator McCain is able 

to join us today, and to our guests, as well. 

The Subcommittee has responsibility for oversight in a number 

of areas. One of those is with respect to the Census Bureau’s preparation for the 2010 Census, and today we are going to hear from 

former Census Directors and experts within the statistical community who will offer their valuable insights into lessons learned from 

past Censuses. It is my hope that their experiences can help the 

Census Bureau conduct an accurate and cost-effective Census in 

2010. 

There is a well-known adage that knowledge is power and the 

Census is an important source of knowledge and information. Census data empowers citizens at every level of government and are 

integral in achieving equitable political representation and fair allocation of resources. Finding and enumerating nearly 300 million 

individuals in the correct location is, of course, an extremely 

daunting task. The 2000 Census involved the hiring of nearly halfa-million temporary workers, the opening of some 500 local Census 

offices nationwide, processing, I believe, 1.5 billion sheets of paper, 

and following up with 42 million non-responsive households. 

Given the sheer magnitude of such an undertaking, a shortcoming in one area can quickly have a domino effect on other operations. For example, a low mail response rate would increase the 

2 

non-response follow-up workload, which in turn would drive the 

Bureau’s staffing needs and drive up costs. 

With each Census, the challenge continues to grow in terms of 

cost and complexity as our population becomes larger, more diverse, and increasingly difficult to enumerate. The cost of the 2010 

Census has escalated to an estimated $14 billion, and that is what 

my statement says. The cost of the 2010 Census has escalated to 

an estimated $14 billion, and I think that is true, making it the 

most expensive in the history of our country. Put another way, it 

will cost the Nation an estimated $100 or so to count each household in 2010, compared with about $56 in 2013 dollars in 1970. The 

growing cost of the Census at a time when the Federal Government 

is facing unprecedented budget deficit highlights the importance of 

making sure that every additional dollar spent on the Census actually improves the quality of the data. 

Although the 2000 Census was an improvement when compared 

to the 1990 Census, there were still many deficiencies. In 2000, 6.4 

million people were missed and 3.1 million people were counted 

twice, producing a net undercount of some 3.3 million people. 

I just interject, usually when we have an overcount, it is people 

that have more than one house, maybe a second home or a vacation 

home, or maybe they have a child who is in college in another 

State, and those are situations that lead to overcounts, and they 

usually occur among the more affluent families. On the other hand, 

the undercounts usually occur among a lot of minority families, 

whether African American or Latino or Native American. But we 

ended up with an undercount of about 6 million people, for the 

most part lower-income folks, and an overcount of about 3 million 

people the last time we did this, mostly of more affluent people. 

Neither one is a good situation, but that is not what we need for 

this Census and the conducting of this Census. 

At any rate, the 2010 Census is approaching rapidly, as we 

know, with the Census date less than 13 months away. The Bureau 

has faced many operational and organizational challenges that 

have jeopardized its success. These challenges include underfunding for outreach to minority communities and the colossal mismanagement and failures of the contract for hand-held computers 

that led to an entire replan of the Census very late in the game. 

Senator Coburn and I have been working on this for several years 

under his leadership as the Chairman of this Subcommittee and 

more recently under my own. 

Further, I understand that the Bureau lacks plans for testing 

some of its key information technology systems. With such a substantial reliance on new technology, a robust testing strategy is 

necessary to identify and correct any problems that may arise. 

I believe we are at a critical juncture. I don’t think it is overstating things to say that the 2010 Census is approaching a state 

of emergency. Significant work still has to be done, and the Bureau 

does not have a Director in place to assist them in making these 

critical decisions. Last month, I sent a letter to President Obama 

urging him to nominate a new Director as soon as possible. I renewed that request as recently as this morning. 

3 

It is my hope that we have learned from these valuable lessons 

and can continue to work together to ensure the success of the 

2010 Census. 

We look forward to the expert testimony here today from our distinguished panel of witnesses. 

I would just say to our colleagues, and we have been joined by 

Senator Coburn, who knows these issues as well or better than 

me—Senator Coburn said that he didn’t think the people here 

knew who Senator McCain was so he is helping with his name tag. 

[Laughter.] 

But, Senator Coburn, we are in a situation where we have gone 

from an Administration where we didn’t have a Census Director in 

place for the longest time, we had to wait for a long time to get 

a nominee, finally got a nominee, a very good one, and he stayed 

with us for about a year and the beginning of this year he tendered 

his resignation letter along with a whole lot of other appointed officials. So now we are waiting until we get a good solid replacement 

and time is wasting. 

Senator McCain, it is great to have you here. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCAIN 

Senator MCCAIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want 

to thank you for holding this hearing and I want to thank the witnesses for appearing here today. I again thank you and Senator 

Coburn, who has a great sense of humor, I am sure you will note, 

for your attention to this issue. 

The first thing I would like to point out, I think it is pretty obvious that we need to have a Director of the Census. I am sure our 

witnesses will be in total agreement on that aspect of this issue. 

We are nearing the time where certainly final preparations for 

one of the more important events are underway—I don’t think people appreciate the importance of the Census. It not only means a 

lot to us as far as Congressional districts are concerned, but so 

much of our Nation’s operations as far as apportionment of money 

for various programs, apportionment of responsibilities. So much of 

the things that we do, and, in fact, laws that we pass every day 

are implemented through the Census, guided by our knowledge, 

hopefully knowledge or lack of knowledge of the people we have in 

each State and each part of each State. 

So obviously a fair and accurate counting is critical. No State 

should be unfairly denied representation or funding for essential 

services because the Census Bureau can’t resolve problems that 

have plagued us for decades, and obviously one of those problems 

is undercounting. I guarantee you that whether it is totally accurate or not, there will be States that claim undercounting at the 

end of this process. I think our witnesses would agree with that. 

And I am one of them. My home State of Arizona suffered severely from undercounting in the 1990 Census. As a result, Arizona 

was denied an additional Congressional seat and lost millions of 

dollars in Federal revenue for schools, roads, housing, and other 

public services. 

Resolving the issue continues to spur debate and the need to 

make constant improvements to traditional enumeration methods 

remains a top priority. So the process must be fair. It has got to 

4 

be conducted in a manner that doesn’t discriminate and doesn’t dissuade participation. 

I want to point out again that some recent activity on the part 

of the Census Bureau does not lend itself to increasing the confidence level. Of course, I am talking about the investment of millions of dollars in hand-held computers that can’t deliver the capability that was once promised. I know our Subcommittee examined 

the issue, but I still feel compelled to bring this up again because 

it is a terrible precedent to set and does not give us confidence. So 

it lost taxpayers’ money because of cost overruns and lost productivity. We can’t afford, obviously, to waste that. 

I am concerned that we have enough time, and I will be interested in hearing from our witnesses, about adequate testing of all 

critical systems and procedures before additional Census activities 

begin. I am most interested to hear from our GAO witnesses about 

the current status of these setbacks and how much delay this mismanagement has caused. 

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our witnesses. Again, this is a very important process that this Nation is 

about to embark on. You mentioned people that have second 

homes. I also think that this is a period of great mobility in America from one place to another for economic reasons and others, including the traditional mobility of Americans. I do not know, 

maybe one of our witnesses knows how many people move from one 

State to another in the course of a year, but it is significant and 

on the increase. 

We have an obligation to ensure that every American is counted 

and counted accurately and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want 

to thank Senator Coburn for his involvement for many years in this 

issue. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you for your statement and thank you 

for joining us in this effort. 

I am going to go to Senator Burris and then to Senator Coburn. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BURRIS 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Welcome. We are delighted that you are here. 

Senator BURRIS. My pleasure. I would like to extend my warm 

welcome to our distinguished valued panelists. I am so pleased to 

see that you are carrying out your constitutional and committed responsibilities to inform us as officials. 

As we approach what projections indicate will be the most expensive Census in history, we must assure that sound leadership aids 

its execution. It is crucial that we take action quickly to guarantee 

success. Constituents must trust us to spend their money wisely 

and we must ensure that we plan both comprehensive and responsible. 

America has changed greatly in the last 10 years and I fear that 

some citizens may be less likely to participate in the Census. We 

already face significant language barriers and we now must attempt to overcome suspicion of legitimacy. With identity theft on 

the rise, many ordinary Americans may overlook the necessity of 

the Census for fear of their personal safety, so we must be very 

concerned about what is happening in the minds of our citizens. 

5 

Fortunately, through the knowledge of the previous experience, 

hard work, and development of new technology, significant opportunities now exist for us to improve the process, and I am with Senator McCain on his comments. 

The undercount, we hear so much about the undercount. I live 

in Chicago and in a metropolitan area, we are always complaining 

about the fact that in those areas, we are not counted because nobody wants to go up into especially what we call the developments. 

Some people refer to them as projects. A lot of them have been torn 

down in Chicago now, but we hope to find where all those people 

were relocated and try to identify those people because that is 

where a lot of the allocations are determined. 

I will have some questions later, and Mr. Chairman, I might 

have to run out, but I will come back with some questions later on. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Senator Burris, thank you very much. 

I am delighted again that my partner in this initiative and part 

of my good oversight is here with us, Senator Coburn. Please proceed. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN 

Senator COBURN. I will just spend a short amount of time. The 

best recommendation I could make to the President is to bring Mr. 

Murdock back. He did a great job while he was there. I think it 

is unfortunate for us as a Nation that he left in the midst of 

straightening out a lot of the problems that were there. I will save 

all the rest of my comments for the time of which we have questioning. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks very much. 

Let me briefly introduce our witnesses, and we will start with 

the Hon. Barbara Bryant. Welcome. She was Director of the Census Bureau from 1983 to 1991, and during her tenure, she directed 

the 1990 Decennial Census of Population and Housing, the 1992 

Economic and Agricultural Census, and other major surveys. I believe you were appointed by President George Herbert Walker 

Bush and confirmed by the Senate as the first woman to head the 

Census Bureau in 200 years of Census taking. Dr. Bryant received 

her Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her M.A. and 

Ph.D. from Michigan State University—a Spartan. Welcome today. 

John Thompson, I call him the real John Thompson, is the President of the National Opinion Research Council at the University of 

Chicago. Mr. Thompson came to the Council after a 27-year career 

at the Census Bureau, where as one of the Bureau’s most senior 

career officers he had the responsibility for all aspects of the 2000 

Census, including management, operations, and methodology. Mr. 

Thompson attended Virginia Tech University, where he was awarded a B.S. and a Master’s of Science degree in mathematics. 

Next, Robert Goldenkoff, Director of Strategic Issues at GAO, 

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’s in political science and Master’s in public policy from George 

Washington University. 

6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Barabba appears in the Appendix on page 33. 

2The prepared statement of Ms. Bryant appears in the Appendix on page 38. 

Dave Powner, good to see you again. Thank you for joining us. 

He has over 20 years of experience in information technology issues 

in both the public and private sector. He is currently responsible 

for a large segment of GAO’s information technology work, including systems development, IT investment and management, health 

IT, and cyber critical infrastructure protection reviews. He is no 

stranger to this Subcommittee. Thank you for joining us again 

today. 

Lawrence D. Brown, Professor in the Department of Statistics at 

the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a 

member of the National Academy of Sciences and has served on 

several committees and panels of the National Research Council, 

including the Committee on National Statistics. Dr. Brown’s work 

includes evaluations on the design and methodology of both the 

2000 and the 2010 Census programs. He received a Bachelor of 

Science degree in mathematics from the California Institute of 

Technology and a Ph.D. in math statistics from Cornell. 

And last but not least, Robert Hill, a sociologist who recently retired as Senior Researcher at Westat, a research firm in Rockville, 

Maryland. He was Chair of the U.S. Census Bureau Advisory Committee on the African American Population for both the 1980 and, 

I think, the 2000 Censuses. Dr. Hill received his Bachelor’s of Art 

in sociology from the City College of New York and a Doctorate in 

sociology from Columbia University. 

We would have one other person here with us today, Vincent 

Barabba, former Census Director during the Nixon and Carter administrations. He was scheduled to participate in our hearing 

today. Due to a series of unanticipated events, he is unable to join 

us. His testimony will be submitted for the record and the Subcommittee looks forward to working with him in the future as we 

continue our oversight of the 2010 Census.1

With those introductions behind us, let me just say, Ms. Bryant, 

we welcome you here. We are delighted that you are going to be 

our lead-off hitter. We will go right down the line and then we will 

ask questions. Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF BARBARA EVERITT BRYANT, PH.D.,2 FORMER 

DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU 

Ms. BRYANT. Thank you, Chairman Carper and Acting Ranking 

Member McCain. You have been given my introduction statement. 

Lesson one for the 2010 Census is the one that all of you have 

referred to, and that is the importance of getting a new Census Director in immediately. I am pleased to see you are pressing on the 

President to make the nomination. On this, I really speak from experience, because—— 

Senator CARPER. If I could interrupt, I also pressed this morning 

on the President’s nominee for Commerce. I ran into Governor 

Locke yesterday and again today and I said, if you haven’t started 

thinking about who you would like to have on the Census Bureau, 

start thinking about it right now. 

Ms. BRYANT. Thank you very much—— 

7 

Senator CARPER. I brought it to his attention. 

Ms. BRYANT [continuing]. From all of us. 

Twenty years ago, I became Director in the same election cycle 

we are in now, that is in the Presidential election in the year ending in eight and nomination in the year ending in nine. However, 

I was not in office until December 7, 1989, 3 weeks before the start 

of the Census year. I was eventually confirmed by the Senate. 

Would Census procedures have been different if I had been in office sooner? Definitely, and I elaborate on this in my written testimony. 

I am a supporter of making the job of Director of the Census Bureau a 5-year Presidential appointment, starting in the years one 

and six. The planning cycle for operations as large as the Decennial 

and Economic Censuses are long and only with a several-year lead 

time can a Director have any real input into what is going to be 

done. I also will say it is no fun for a Census Director to sit in front 

of Congressional committees like this defending operations in 

which he or she had no input. 

Lesson two is that a major professional coordinated communications and advertising campaign is vital to Census success and accuracy. Such a campaign requires a major financial outlay. It has two 

components, a large volume of inexpensive promotional materials 

that can be handed out or posted at the local level; and radio, TV, 

and newspaper spots professionally produced with goals of reaching 

both the mass national and targeted audiences. 

The advertising campaign has got to be on a scale comparable to 

what a private sector firm would use to introduce a new product. 

After all, the Census is a new product to everyone in their 20s, and 

is a 10-year-old, half-forgotten product for anyone 30 and over. 

Lesson three is outreach to hard-to-count segments of the population. Through partnerships with geographic, ethnic, and racial organizations, we can help reduce the undercount. The Census historically has fully counted some segments of the population, particularly homeowners and older Americans. It falls short of fully 

counting the very mobile, the renters, the young people, and particularly those in Hispanic, Latino, African American, and American Indian communities. These hard-to-count are best reached 

with one-on-one contacts from local people and organizations in 

whom they have trust. 

Communicating the fact that the Census Bureau will not give information from their Census forms to any other organization or individual is a very hard message to get across. Only trusted sources 

can convince the reluctant, the fearful, or the uninformed that the 

Census Bureau does not give information to the INS, the IRS, landlords, ex-spouses, or mothers-in-law. [Laughter.] 

In addition to implementing these three lessons, three other factors will help improve the accuracy in 2010. One is the American 

Community Survey, which is now ongoing, and it replaces the information formerly gathered on the long form with about 50 questions that went to 17 percent of households. The long form always 

had a several percent lower mail return than the short form. 

The second thing that is going to help is the downturn in employment. This is a national tragedy, but it does have the benefit for 

the Census Bureau that they are going to have a bigger pool of peoVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Thompson appears in the Appendix on page 44. 

ple from which to choose their temporary employees. My Census, 

we had 5 percent unemployment and the pool had dried up to be 

a puddle. 

And third, the undercount research done after all the recent Censuses identifies very precisely where non-respondents are geographically so they can be targeted. Such research is important to 

fund for every Census. 

But now the big inhibitor to a good count in 2010 is the fear in 

the Hispanic-Latino communities. The current Immigration and 

Naturalization raids on such communities, on employers and neighborhoods is bound to depress cooperation. I flew in yesterday from 

Phoenix, Senator McCain, where I do have a second home and 

some households there include both legal and undocumented immigrants. You can imagine when a Census taker goes into those 

neighborhoods and says, ‘‘I am from the Census Bureau and I have 

a few questions from the Government,’’ what a warm reception 

they may receive. 

Finally, you asked us to comment on a cost-effective Census. 

Well, counting every person and household is never going to be a 

cheap operation, particularly with all this follow-up on the hard-tocount. But with this experience in the logistics of the operation and 

its magnitude, and I will add the wonderful employees, the longterm career employees at the Census Bureau, the Census Bureau 

probably does as cost-effective a job as any organization could. But 

current staff, not the Director of a $2.6 billion Census conducted 

20 years ago must report to you on present efforts to be cost effective. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you very much. Mr. Thompson. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN THOMPSON,1 PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

OPINION RESEARCH COUNCIL 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the 

Subcommittee. I am truly honored to be glad to speak to you about 

the 2010 Census. As you asked, I will talk about some of the successes in 2000 and relate them to the risks with respect to the 2010 

Census. 

Before I start, I would quickly like to recognize the fact that I 

worked with a lot of the people at the Census Bureau right now. 

I know that they are motivated to do high-quality work. They are 

nonpartisan and they are very good and my remarks are intended 

to help them with their effort, not in any way to criticize them. 

So starting with Census 2000, I think the first factor I would 

mention in success, and you will hear a lot of the same things, I 

think, is the unprecedented support that the 2000 Census received. 

One example of that was that the mail response rate was 67 percent, which was higher than the 1990 Census rate of 65 percent. 

That was the first Census where the decline in mail response rate 

had been reversed. 

I think there were three factors that contributed to that. The 

first is a paid advertising campaign. It was the first Census that 

used a paid advertising campaign. 

9 

The second was a very well-funded effort to establish partnerships with local community groups. 

And the third was a very effective communications strategy that 

reached out to numerous stakeholders, including the Congress, 

State, local, and Tribal governments, and a variety of advocacy 

groups. 

In addition, the non-response follow-up operation, the most difficult part of the Census, was finished in 9 weeks. One of the factors that contributed to that was, in my opinion, the fact that the 

public was highly motivated to cooperate and we didn’t have to 

visit the households too many times. There were other factors 

which I will mention, too. 

Another factor in the success of the Census was that we had a 

Director in place in time to provide leadership and guidance. That 

Director was Kenneth Pruitt. I had the privilege of working with 

him. He provided leadership, guidance, and set an environment up 

where the career people could be successful. I also would note that 

I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Bryant on the 1990 Census 

and that was also a fine experience. 

Another factor was that we had a very strong management team 

in place that was very experienced and included managers with 

both Census experience and managers from outside of the Census 

Bureau that brought different perspectives to problem solving, and 

we had the team in place in time to make some significant contributions. 

Another factor was that the Census 2000 field effort was very 

well funded and well managed. We had done studies that linked 

pay for retention and we had an excellent group of regional directors who managed the Census. We were able to recruit and retain 

a workforce to do the job. 

We also had effective usage of private sector contractors in 2000 

to provide advance technology solutions to our data capture operations. We had private sector contractors that ran some very large 

facilities, recruited a lot of staff, and put in place optical scanning 

and intelligent character recognition software that allowed us to 

capture over 80 percent of the handwritten entries on the Census 

forms with a very high degree of accuracy. 

The final factor I will mention which is relevant to this Census 

is that we had a thorough testing of all of our operational systems. 

We had a dress rehearsal in 1998 where we tested our systems 

from start to finish. That was very important. We also, I will note, 

had to change the Census design. There was a controversy over 

Census. We were going to add two tracts, and in 1999, we decided—the Supreme Court decided that we would not use sampling 

for the count, so we had a redesigned Census that did not use sampling. The fact that we had our systems tested, we were able to 

modify them and move forward. 

So for 2010, the major risk is in systems development and testing. I think the Subcommittee said that and it is fairly obvious. 

They had to abandon their plan to use hand-helds. They are going 

back to a paper-based system. They have taken over the control 

system from a private contractor. I think the best recommendation 

I can make is that they need to do a full-scale, large field test of 

that system to conduct a response follow-up, to collect some data, 

10 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff appears in the Appendix on page 49. 

to make sure that they have interfaces with all the key systems, 

and to make sure that interviewers, Census enumerators, fairly inexperienced people can utilize these systems. 

I will say just a couple more things. We have talked about the 

Director. I agree with that. 

Senator CARPER. When you say agree with it, be more specific in 

what you agree with, the importance of getting a good one or—— 

Mr. THOMPSON. I agree that we need a Director of the Census 

Bureau as soon as possible. Like I said, having a Director in place 

during the Census is just incredibly important, and in the period 

preceding the Census. 

They need also to establish a communications lead. That needs 

to be appointed. They don’t have one right now. 

The management staff, I think they are doing a good job. They 

are working as hard as they can. I think they are very thin. I think 

they should reach out to some of the other Federal agencies to look 

for some more talent. 

Their coverage measurement system is currently scheduled in a 

fashion where I am concerned that it won’t produce accurate measures. It is scheduled to take place too far after Census Day and I 

think there will be issues with recall bias associated with it. They 

need to tighten the schedule up similar to previous Censuses. 

And finally, Dr. Brown will talk a lot, I think, about the experimental program for the 2020 Census, but I encourage the Subcommittee to challenge the Census Bureau to develop plans for a 

different type of Census for 2020, one that is less expensive and relies on alternative methods of data collection. 

That concludes my remarks. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Goldenkoff. 

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

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Chairman Carper, Ranking Member McCain, 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be 

here today to provide a progress report on the 2010 Census. I am 

here with Dave Powner, a Director on GAO’s Information Technology team. 

As requested, in our remarks today, I will provide a broad overview of the status of key Census-taking operations and Mr. Powner 

will focus on the findings and recommendations contained in our 

report on IT testing which we are releasing today. 

This afternoon’s hearing is particularly timely. It was exactly one 

year ago today that GAO designated the 2010 Census as a highrisk area for three reasons. First, there were weaknesses in the 

Census Bureau’s IT acquisition and contract management function. 

Second, there were problems with the performance of hand-held 

computers used to collect data. And third, the ultimate cost of the 

Census is uncertain, although it is currently estimated at more 

than $14 billion. 

At the same time, just over one year from now, it will be Census 

Day. Little time remains to address the challenges that have 

emerged thus far and make final preparations for the numerous opVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
11 

erations that will take place throughout 2010. In short, today’s 

hearing is a convenient waystation on the road to Census Day, a 

time to look back on the Census Bureau’s efforts over the past year 

to address the operational challenges that have emerged thus far 

as well as to look ahead to what the Bureau needs to do in the 

coming months to help ensure a successful head count. 

Importantly, the Bureau has made commendable progress over 

the past year in rolling out key components of the Census and to 

strengthen certain risk management efforts. Still, the Census remains high-risk because a dress rehearsal of all Census operations 

that was planned for 2008 was curtailed. As a result, critical activities, including some that will be used for the first time in a Census, 

were not tested in concert with one another or under Census-like 

conditions. 

The bottom line is that key Census-taking activities, including 

those that will ultimately drive the final cost and accuracy of the 

count, continue to face challenges and the Bureau’s overall readiness for 2010 is uncertain. 

One such challenge is building the Bureau’s address list. Because 

a complete and accurate address list is the cornerstone of a successful Census, the Bureau has a number of operations aimed at 

including every residence in the country and works with the U.S. 

Postal Service, agencies at all levels of government, as well as a 

number of non-governmental entities. In a few weeks, the Bureau 

will send thousands of workers to walk every street in the country 

to update the Census address list and maps in an operation called 

address canvassing. Census workers will use hand-held computers 

to collect data. 

As you know, when the devices were tested, they experienced 

performance problems, such as freeze-ups and unreliable transmissions. The Bureau took steps to fix these issues and the results 

of a small-scale test held last December are encouraging. Nonetheless, more information is needed to determine the Bureau’s overall 

readiness for address canvassing, as a field test was not an endto-end systems evaluation, did not validate training, help desk support, and other requirements, and did not include urban areas. 

Uncertainties also surround the Bureau’s ability to implement 

operations that will be used for the first time in a decennial Census, including the targeted second mailing to reduce the non-response follow-up workload and the need to fingerprint temporary 

Census workers. The Bureau’s readiness for these activities is uncertain because they have not been tested under Census-like conditions. 

Another challenge facing the Bureau, as we have mentioned, is 

reducing the undercount. As with past enumerations, the Bureau 

is putting forth tremendous effort to reach groups that are often 

missed by the Census, such as minorities, renters, and people with 

limited English proficiency. For example, the Bureau plans to provide language assistance guides in 59 languages, an increase from 

49 languages in 2000. 

Although the effects of the Bureau’s communication efforts are 

difficult to measure, the Bureau reported some positive results 

from its 2000 marketing efforts with respect to raising awareness 

12 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Powner appears in the Appendix on page 68. 

of the Census. Still, a longstanding challenge for the Bureau is converting awareness of the Census into an actual response. 

Some specific hurdles that need to be overcome include the Nation’s linguistic diversity and privacy concerns and a post-September 11, 2001 environment that could heighten some groups’ 

fears of government agencies. 

In summary, just 13 months remain until Census Day. At a time 

when major testing should be completed and there should be confidence in the functionality of key operations, the Bureau instead 

finds itself managing late design changes and developing testing 

plans. The Bureau has taken some important steps towards mitigating some of the challenges that it has faced to date, yet much 

remains uncertain and the risks to a successful decennial Census 

continue. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID POWNER,1 DIRECTOR, INFORMATION 

TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. POWNER. Chairman Carper, Ranking Member McCain, and 

Members of the Subcommittee, the accuracy of the 2010 Census depends in large part on the proper functioning of IT systems both 

individually and when integrated together. 

Mr. Chairman and Dr. Coburn, your oversight of the Bureau’s acquisition of IT systems was critical last year. In particular, the 

field data collection system is no longer spiraling out of control and 

that contract is $500 million less than the initial estimates provided at your hearings last summer. Your oversight is needed once 

again in the technology area to ensure that between now and Census Day, these systems are rigorously tested. 

Today, we are releasing our latest report completed at your request which highlights that significant testing remains. Six major 

systems need to complete system testing and much integration 

testing needs to occur. Plans for conducting this testing are not 

completely in place. In order to ensure effective test execution, the 

Bureau needs comprehensive metrics to monitor test completion 

and effective executive-level oversight to keep the pressure on and 

to manage risks. 

Our report contains 10 detailed recommendations that the Bureau has agreed to address. For example, integration testing includes testing the interfaces or the handshake between systems. 

Our work found that not only are there not complete plans for integration testing of these interfaces, but there is not even a master 

list of interfaces. Not having such basic information at this stage 

is unacceptable and our recommendations call for the Bureau to, 

one, develop a master list of interfaces; two, prioritize the interfaces based on criticality and need date; and three, to use this information to develop all the needed integration test plans. 

To the Bureau’s credit, we are seeing more plans and better 

metrics, but there is still much work ahead in both areas. I would 

like to stress the need to prioritize. It is likely that the Bureau will 

not have enough time to test everything. Testing the most imporVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
13 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Brown appears in the Appendix on page 78. 

2The letter from Mr. Brown appears in the Appendix on page 82. 

tant aspects of certain systems, interfaces, and operations is critical 

given the limited time remaining. 

Mr. Chairman, again, thank you for your leadership and I will 

look forward to your questions. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you very much, Mr. Powner, for you and 

others of your colleagues at GAO for helping Senator Coburn and 

I and our staffs in this effort. Thank you. 

Dr. Brown, please. 

TESTIMONY OF LAWRENCE D. BROWN, PH.D.,1 CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL STATISTICS, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF 

SCIENCES 

Mr. BROWN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for inviting me to talk to you this afternoon. As you noted, I am a professor 

of statistics at the Wharton School of Business and I have been actively interested in issues relating to the Decennial Census for over 

a decade. 

Among other things, I have served on several other National 

Academy of Sciences advisory panels involving Census issues, and 

currently I am Chair of a panel to review the Census program of 

evaluations and experiments. Many of my comments this afternoon 

are drawn from a very recent letter report of this panel that was 

mailed to Thomas Mesenbourg as Acting Director of the Census 

Bureau.2

There are three issues I would like to bring to your attention 

from our panel’s reports. Two of these involve research and planning that should be part of the 2010 Census and the third concern 

is a more immediate one about research that should be conducted 

before fielding the 2010 Census, and I will start with that issue. 

Actually, I am the third person on this panel, as well as you, to 

have talked about the concern with the operating control system. 

As you have remarked and several others have remarked, the 

hand-held devices that were scheduled to be used in the non-response follow-up portion of the Census, academically termed 

NRFU, were withdrawn from use and that led to a considerable increase in Census costs. 

But I want to focus on a different aspect of this forced change 

and it is really the aspect that both John Thompson and Robert 

Goldenkoff have also mentioned. These devices had been designated to form the core of the operating control system for NRFU. 

NRFU, as you noted, is a process that has over half-a-million people in the field operating out of many local offices. This army of 

people requires a system to keep track of it and the Census Bureau 

is now in the process of restructuring their entire operating control 

system because of the necessity of removing the hand-helds. 

So because of the timing of the decision to revert from hand-held 

computers to paper-based NRFU, the 2008 dress rehearsal did not 

test NRFU at all, and this was, of course, a major gap in Census 

testing. Because it wasn’t tested, the dress rehearsal provided no 

information on interaction of NRFU processes with the redesigned 

14 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Hill appears in the Appendix on page 95. 

coverage follow-up operation and various other components of the 

process. 

As a remedy, the Census Bureau has scheduled a number of isolated component tests, but this testing, component-wise testing 

strategy puts the Bureau in an extremely risky position. So I want 

to just reemphasize that the Bureau needs to perform as full and 

realistic an operational test from start to finish of this system as 

they can, including all of the interactions among the various components. 

So the two research issues that I want to mention, and I will try 

and be brief in mentioning them, the first of these involves administrative records that could be used in the Census. The Census Bureau in the past two decades has conducted a research program to 

see whether administrative records could be used to increase the 

accuracy and reduce the cost of the Census. We believe that they 

offer the best chance of accomplishing those ends, but there are not 

scheduled to be any major tests of administrative records in the 

2010 Census, and given that their use provides one of the few opportunities to substantially reduce Census field costs, we believe 

that the Census Bureau should devote serious effort and attention 

to including an experiment or research during the 2010 Census to 

see whether such records can be used in the future. 

And finally, with respect to the Internet, the Internet is another 

opportunity for cost reduction and improvement in data quality and 

the Census Bureau has no plans to incorporate Internet questionnaires in 2010 or to perform research on how that would enable 

them to be used in 2020. So we believe that, if for no other reason 

than to avoid looking out of step with modern data collection and 

because of their problems, the Bureau should be conducting some 

coordinated program of Internet research using Internet devices. 

I think I will close here. Thank you for the invitation to testify, 

and I would be happy to address any further questions. 

Senator CARPER. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Dr. 

Hill, please. 

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT B. HILL, PH.D.,1 SOCIOLOGIST AND 

FORMER CHAIR OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE AFRICAN AMERICAN POPULATION, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU 

Mr. HILL. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members of this 

Subcommittee. I am pleased to be invited to provide testimony on 

this very important subject. 

My testimony will focus on a major lesson learned from prior 

Censuses: The importance of developing strong partnerships and 

community outreach strategies with hard-to-count populations in 

order to reduce the minority undercount in the Census. 

My initial experience with Decennial Censuses goes back to 1969, 

when I was appointed National Director of the National Urban 

League’s 1970 Census Project. This project was launched by Whitney Young, who was the Executive Director of the National Urban 

League at that time, and it was designed to reduce the black 

undercount in the Census. This was the first national partnership 

between the U.S. Census Bureau and a minority organization with 

15 

over 100 branches throughout the country. The primary purpose of 

the 1970 Census Project, whose slogan was, ‘‘Make Black Count,’’ 

was to educate African Americans about the importance of the Census and to encourage them to cooperate. 

Our community outreach project was successful in convincing 

large segments of the African American community to participate 

in the 1970 Census. However, post-Census studies revealed that 

there was still a sizeable undercount of African Americans and 

other minorities in the 1970 Census. We believe that a major reason for the historic undercount of minority groups was the failure 

of the Census Bureau to adequately involve minority representatives in the advance planning and implementation of Decennial 

Censuses. 

Therefore, in his testimony to the House Census Oversight Committee in September 1970, Whitney Young recommended that the 

Census Bureau establish ongoing minority advisory committees to 

improve its strategies for reducing the undercount. Indeed, in 1975 

under the visionary leadership of Vincent Barabba as the Census 

Bureau Director, the first Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees, 

which are also called REACs, were formed to assist the Bureau in 

planning for the 1980 Census. The initial REACs comprised four 

minority groups: African Americans, American Indians, Hispanics, 

and Asians. For the 2000 Census, a fifth group was added, Native 

Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. 

I served as Chair of the African American Committee in the 

planning for the 1980 Census, was reappointed for the 2000 Census, and was involved in the initial planning for the 2010 Census. 

Over the years, the Bureau has improved its methods for enumerating the African American population and for reducing the 

undercount among minorities. While there is still a differential 

undercount, its size has steadily declined. 

For example, while the Bureau estimated that it missed about 

1.5 million, or 8 percent, of the black population in 1970, it failed 

to count about 1 million, or 1.8 percent of them, in the 2000 Census. But the group with the highest undercount rates in Decennial 

Census, regardless of race or ethnicity, are children under 18. 

One of the most effective strategies the Bureau has used to reduce the minority undercount is to develop strong partnerships 

with minority groups in all phases of Census planning and to conduct aggressive education and outreach campaigns in hard-to-count 

communities. Based on my experience with prior Censuses, I would 

like to offer some recommendations. 

First, I think it is very important that Congress provides the 

Census Bureau with adequate resources to undertake the mammoth task of achieving a fair and accurate count. President Obama 

and Members of Congress should be congratulated for including an 

additional $1 billion in the President’s stimulus bill to enhance the 

Bureau’s enumeration activities in 2010. I was especially pleased 

that the bill stipulates that the Bureau can spend up to $250 million for its partnership program and outreach efforts to minority 

communities and hard-to-reach populations. 

Second, because of its comprehensive scope, the 2010 Census will 

directly stimulate this economy by hiring over half a million Census takers across the Nation. It is essential that there is an ethVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
16 

nically and racially diverse workforce, from the staff in the district 

offices to the enumerators in the neighborhoods and barrios. Members of hard-to-count populations should be adequately represented 

at all levels of Census hires, especially among the new partnership 

specialists. 

Third, one of the remarkable successes of the 2000 Census was 

the use of paid advertising to communicate messages about the importance of the Census to all groups. The fact that minority-owned 

advertising firms were extensively used to reach their respective 

groups played a large part in reducing the undercount in minority 

communities in the 2000 Census. 

Fourth and finally, the Bureau should permit members of its five 

Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees to play a more prominent 

role in implementing the 2010 Census, such as recommending partnership specialists and minority advertising firms, distributing foreign language Census forms, and identifying local sites for training 

Census workers and for serving as assistance centers to aid the elderly and other individuals to fill out their forms. 

These are a few suggestions I have to offer to ensure that the 

2010 Census will be one of the most accurate and equitable enumerations in our history. Thank you for this opportunity. 

Senator CARPER. Dr. Hill, those were great recommendations. 

I was asked in a media interview earlier today why we are having this hearing. One of the things, we have a responsibility to do 

is oversight. Dr. Coburn has tried very hard, both as the Chairman 

of the Subcommittee and as Ranking Member of this Subcommittee 

joined by me, to ensure we meet our responsibility for oversight. I 

replied to the reporter who asked me the question, ‘‘What do you 

hope to accomplish from your hearing today,’’ and what I hope to 

accomplish is, one, I would like to ask each of you to send me two 

names by close of business tomorrow of somebody that you think 

would be an excellent Director of the Bureau of the Census. By 

close of business tomorrow, give us two names of people you think 

are well equipped to do this job. I hope the Administration has 

somebody that they are vetting, that they are close to submitting, 

but just in case they don’t, I want to make sure that we can give 

them a bigger talent pool to draw from. 

At least one of you said in your comments earlier today, talking 

about sort of a silver lining, high unemployment times right now. 

Well, the silver lining in that is that there is a great pool of talent 

from which to draw to work in the Census, whether enumerators 

or others, that will help reduce, I think, the mistakes that are 

made as we count people. So that is a potential for something good 

happening. 

But give us a couple of good names, each one of you, if you 

would, by close of business tomorrow. Thank you very much. 

The other thing I mentioned in response to the reporter’s question today, I said I want to make sure that when that new Director 

of the Bureau of the Census is identified, vetted, nominated, confirmed, goes to work, that he or she have a pretty good to-do list 

that we have provided to him or her from some people who have 

been there and done this, not just once, in some cases twice and 

three times. We want to make sure that this Subcommittee is better equipped to do our job for oversight. 

17 

Dr. Hill was good enough to give us four recommendations. 

Would you just run through those again real quickly, and then 

what I am going to do is ask the panel to react to those recommendations very briefly and to say if there are some that you 

would like to add to that. I think you have in your individual testimony. But beyond making sure we get an excellent Director on 

board soon, in place, just give us those four recommendations 

again, Dr. Hill. 

Mr. HILL. Essentially, the first was that the Bureau has adequate financial resources to conduct the Census. 

Senator CARPER. And I think you said we seem to have done 

that. 

Mr. HILL. That is right. 

Senator CARPER. Good. 

Mr. HILL. Second is that they should hire a workforce that is ethnically and racially diverse and represents the hard-to-count and 

minority community populations. 

The third was that we should use the paid advertising as was 

done in 2000, but also use minority-owned firms that can effectively target their messages to various hard-to-reach groups. 

And the fourth was to permit the members of the REAC Committees to play a more prominent role in implementing the 2010 Census. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Talk about that last one again just a little 

bit more, please. 

Mr. HILL. These Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees are really 

very important, because they have members who come from diverse 

minority communities and work very well together. For example, 

we supported the recommendations of American Indians, and Hispanics and vice versa. They are also strong advocates for their local 

communities. 

One of the most effective ways of reducing the Census 

undercount is to have messages that are communicated by people 

who are trusted at the local level. That is the main ingredient— 

that local people are used who come in contact with others at their 

level, not at a higher level, and who can communicate the message 

to them. We have found this strategy to work every single time. 

These representatives can be very effective in many ways, such as 

distributing foreign language Census forms and helping people to 

complete their forms at assistance centers. 

All of these activities are important for reducing the non-response follow-up. High response rates to mailed questionnaires will 

reduce the extent to which non-response follow-ups—which are the 

most tedious part of Decennial Censuses—are needed. 

Senator CARPER. I think one of you, I don’t know if it was Mr. 

Thompson, but one of you testified that the non-response, I think 

we had more people responding, was it in 2000 than in 1990, by 

2 percent? It actually went up, the number of respondents went up, 

I think you said it was 65 to 67 percent. Good. 

Others on the panel, if anybody would like to say that you think 

Dr. Hill has some good ideas, if you do, that is fine. Say that. If 

you think there are some other ideas on it, some of you made recommendations that were similar, others different, but I would love 

to hear your ideas. Let us start with you, Ms. Bryant. 

18 

Ms. BRYANT. I agree completely on the paid advertising. 

Senator CARPER. I think you mentioned that. 

Ms. BRYANT. We did not have it in 1990. The Bureau went one 

Census too long, and I am sure Mr. Thompson will agree with me, 

on depending on Public Service Announcements. The TV and radio 

stations were no longer required for their FCC licenses to give you 

around-the-clock, so we had some wonderful advertisements, including using four minority advertising firms, but they were playing at 3 o’clock in the morning. And so going to the paid advertising, which was a recommendation after our Census, I think 

made an enormous difference. And, of course, I am very attuned to 

Census things, but I just heard them everywhere. It was a really 

big campaign and I know it cost a lot of money, but you have got 

to pay for that. 

Senator CARPER. Some of you remember the battle between the 

States and the tobacco industry a decade or so ago when the States 

attorneys general sought to extract a fair amount of money from 

the tobacco industry and a lot of that actually went into a foundation called the American Legacy Foundation, whose job it was to 

try to transmit to young people in this country the message not to 

smoke, not to get started, and if you are, stop. 

I was the founding vice chairman of that as governor at the time 

and we decided we would do a paid ad campaign. We decided it 

wouldn’t be ads that guys like me would develop, but we would find 

really younger, hip ad agencies who could connect with young people, and they ended up putting their messages on TV shows that 

I never watched, but my sons later did. A lot of young people did, 

music stations, radio stations and so forth, the Internet, in ways 

they are just a lot smarter to connect that. It sounds like that is 

what we need to do here today. 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, similarly with the African American other 

group agencies, they know the media their people watch. They did 

a great job in our Census of producing ads that just—they weren’t 

given enough air time because we didn’t pay for it. 

Senator CARPER. Good. All right. Mr. Thompson. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I agree with Dr. Hill. I would, as a footnote, note that the reason that we had such an active partnership 

program in addition to the paid advertising in 2000 was the education that the Racial and Ethnic Advisory Committees provided to 

us on the importance of reaching out at the grassroots level to instill participation. 

I would, however, add a little bit to his recommendations. I think 

the most important recommendation I made, and I will restate it, 

is that there needs to be a thorough, extensive field test of all the 

systems involved in their non-response follow-up operation. That 

operation is the key to a good Census. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Good. I think a couple of other witnesses 

have said the same thing. 

Maybe one more, Mr. Goldenkoff, and then I will yield to Dr. 

Coburn. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Sure. I think that everything that has been 

said thus far is consistent with what GAO has said in the past, but 

I would like to put a couple of other things out on the table. 

Senator CARPER. Please. 

19 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Leadership. In addition to the timely appointment of a Census Director, what should that Census Director do 

when he or she gets in office? One, I think it is fairly important 

that the Census Director regularly reach out to key House and 

Senate committees. Transparency is key. It helps ensure that the 

Census is on track. It builds that confidence that we talked about 

earlier. It is so important, especially when you have an operation 

that is going to cost between $14 and $15 billion. The Director also 

needs to embrace oversight. Transparency is very critical because 

that also instills a comfort level. 

Operationally, risk and cost management are essential. We need 

to ensure that the IT systems are fully tested. That, we have spoken at length about. The Bureau also needs to set priorities. 

And I would also like to put a slightly different take on some of 

the outreach and promotion activities as well. We agree with the 

partnership specialists and need for partnerships in general. A 

Census is inherently local. But I also think the Bureau should consider other ways of using partners for other types of operations. 

For example, in the 2000 Census, the partner—I forget which locality it was, but the locality actually enlisted the help of their trash 

collectors because they cover the streets every single day and the 

locality trained them to look for hidden housing units. So that was 

a case where they used another local group, part of the government 

was enlisted to help in an address-building operation. 

Building a blog. Maybe the Census Director could consider putting a blog up there to deal with snafus that might come up or provide regular progress on the Census on a daily basis. But again, 

part of just a different take on the outreach. 

Senator CARPER. That is a great list. Let me yield to Dr. Coburn. 

Thank you all for your responses. 

Senator COBURN. Well, thank you for your testimony. Mr. 

Thompson, I am not wanting to put you on the spot so I am going 

to ask this question where you don’t have to answer it directly and 

then I will talk to you later. [Laughter.] 

One of the eight things you said you all did in 2000, number 

seven was that you had a strong management team in place. Are 

you in a position now where you could assess whether or not there 

is a strong management team? I am not asking whether there is 

or not. I am just saying, are you in the position now where you 

could make that assessment of what you see at the Census Bureau 

now, since you are working with them so closely? 

Mr. THOMPSON. I believe that I could provide an assessment. 

Senator COBURN. OK. I will let you off with that. I don’t want 

to put you on the spot. 

Mr. Goldenkoff, you talked about risk management systems that 

need to be in place, and I have not seen your report yet, so I am 

operating at a deficit if it is out there. My staff has seen it and I 

didn’t get a chance to thoroughly prep for this hearing. Have you 

all specifically listed those areas where they do not have now and 

need to have—— 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I will turn it over to Mr. Powner. We did make 

10 recommendations in the report that we issued today. 

Senator COBURN. Yes, but it is just 10 and it is in the report. 

20 

Mr. POWNER. Yes. It is very detailed, Dr. Coburn. There are six 

systems that need to be tested—— 

Senator COBURN. I have got that down—— 

Mr. POWNER [continuing]. There are 44 operations—— 

Senator COBURN [continuing]. And the integration—— 

Mr. POWNER [continuing]. And there are about 250 interfaces 

that need to be prioritized. At one time, they said they were going 

to designate a test director. We have someone who is working in 

that position part-time. We address that in the report. We have a 

recommendation for a dedicated test director. And then clearly we 

need metrics in place to really monitor this going forward because 

there is a lot to get done here. 

Senator COBURN. OK. And in your report, you are recommending 

that they have to list the areas of interfaces and then test them? 

Mr. POWNER. Yes, absolutely. 

Senator COBURN. You make that absolute recommendation. They 

see it, and they know it is there. 

Mr. POWNER. Absolutely. 

Senator COBURN. So in your opinion, if they follow your recommendations, both in terms of management, technical achievements, risk intervention, preparation for risk failure, testing, 

should they be able to accomplish what they need to accomplish for 

the 2010 Census? 

Mr. POWNER. From a systems point of view, I think it is still 

highly likely they won’t be able to test everything completely. 

Senator COBURN. Before they go into the field? 

Mr. POWNER. Correct. 

Senator COBURN. How about while they are going into the field? 

In other words—— 

Mr. POWNER. You could continue, sure. You can continue while 

you are live, and frankly, that is what happens. I mean, when 

something goes wrong, you have bugs and you fix them on the fly, 

right? 

Senator COBURN. Right. 

Mr. POWNER. But clearly, that is why the need here is to really 

prioritize. I mean, there is systems, the integration and the operations. One of the most important operations we heard, NRFU with 

the operational control system, that all needs to be tested collectively. That is clearly one of the key operations. But there are also 

others. So prioritization and really having these plans in place. 

But I think it is likely they won’t get to some of them. That is 

why we want to see that prioritization. 

Senator COBURN. I had a conversation with a CEO of a firm, not 

this particular firm, that makes one of these. He said, in 3 months, 

they could have put together a package that you could use for 

NRFU to do everything they want and transmit. They never were 

asked. Never were asked, not once. They didn’t ever go to anything 

outside the contract they had. Even once they got in trouble, they 

never went to look, is there a way where we can still solve this, 

save money, have collection of data, transmit it. It was never 

asked. 

Even if we get a new Census Director, we have 20th Century 

thinking, in my estimation, at the Census Bureau, not 21st. The 

resistance to online, as Dr. Brown talked about, I mean, I have 

21 

been fighting this for 4 years, ever since they abandoned the Lockheed contract. Sorry, we are just not going to do it. 

And so I have great worries. The number one worry, this isn’t going to cost $14.8 billion. It is going to cost $18 to $19 billion. You 

wait and see. There will be another $3 or $4 billion in an omnibus 

bill, emergency bill for the Census because, oh my gosh, we can’t 

get it done. And part of the bureaucracy is don’t ask for everything 

you need now because if you ask it under emergency for a Census, 

you are backing up against the window and you are going to get 

it. So it is going to cost—is it $9.3 billion, is what the 2000 Census 

cost in today’s dollars, and we are going to be at least double that. 

Mr. Hill, tell me how we do—I understand the organization of 

the African American community. It is very well organized in a lot 

of these. How do I do it for Native Americans in Oklahoma? Tribal, 

yes, where we have reservations, it is much easier because we have 

an isolated group. But in States like Oklahoma and Tennessee and 

some of these other States that have large tribal populations but 

they are not reservation-based, do you have any ideas on how that 

outreach can be best accomplished? 

Mr. HILL. You are right about the greater difficulty of reaching 

non-reservation American Indians. There needs to be more aggressive outreach and targeting of community groups who work closely 

with Native Americans who do not live on reservations. The current approach appears to be fragmented and not reaching the 

grassroots groups. There is an urgent need to more effectively target community groups and tribes who work closely with American 

Indians not living on reservations. This strategy can work if strong 

local partnerships are developed with such indigenous groups. 

When I talk about a more prominent role for members of the 

Race and Ethnic Advisory Committees, there are many things that 

can be done by working from the bottom up. This community-based 

approach is especially needed for minorities who speak foreign languages. 

Senator COBURN. In other words, it is important to ask the question, will you come help us? 

Mr. HILL. That is right. 

Senator COBURN. Now tell us how. 

Mr. HILL. As I said before, strong partnerships can markedly improve outreach to the various minority groups, even among American Indians who do not live on reservations. 

Senator COBURN. OK. I am almost out of time. Mr. Brown, there 

was imputation used in the last Census. Would you comment on 

that, whether or not it resulted in overcount or undercount for 

where it was utilized, in your estimation, and whether or not that 

is an appropriate thing to do in this Census. 

Mr. BROWN. I think imputation is essential in any Census. There 

are many situations in the field where the enumerators cannot talk 

directly to the resident of the household, and yet they know it is 

occupied. So one way or another, the data has to be included, from 

neighbors—that is part of my emphasis on administrative records, 

is that those provide potentially a much better method for filling 

in data in households you know are occupied. 

Senator COBURN. Do you know whether or not that would comply 

with the Supreme Court ruling? 

22 

Mr. BROWN. No, and I am not a legal expert—— 

Senator COBURN. OK. Does anybody on the panel know whether 

that would comply with the Supreme Court ruling? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I believe it does. I don’t think there was a 

court decision that disputed it. 

Mr. THOMPSON. I believe there was—Utah raised a lawsuit about 

the use of imputation. It did go to the Supreme Court, and I believe 

that it was found to be acceptable. 

Senator COBURN. OK. Thank you. Please continue. I am sorry to 

interrupt you. 

Mr. BROWN. So I do think imputation is essential. It needs to be 

done carefully. As a statistician, I think that statisticians could 

suggest a lot of improvements in the current imputation methodology. Much of the duplication that Mr. Carper mentioned is related to imputation processes, and so there is plenty of room to improve on this product, but I think it is needed in some form or 

other. 

Senator COBURN. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, you have been very generous with time. Thank 

you for holding this hearing. I would make one comment before I 

have to leave. I think it is real important that your Subcommittee, 

even if we don’t—— 

Senator CARPER. I would say, our Subcommittee. We used to call 

it our Subcommittee. 

Senator COBURN [continuing]. Our Subcommittee, even if we 

don’t have a Census Director named, whoever is acting and whoever is along before your committee on the basis of the recommendations of the GAO and also what we heard here today and 

see where the planning is ongoing. 

Senator CARPER. Good. I think that is a very good recommendation. 

All right. Senator Burris. 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator Coburn, your last statement was where is the Acting Director, would be my question, and we should certainly have that 

Acting Director here, Mr. Chairman. 

Second, Mr. Chairman, I would also give you a name of a person 

who can move in that direction in terms of running this operation 

because right now, evidently from what I hear from GAO, they are 

really behind the eight-ball in terms of what direction will come in 

order to get this off the ground in a timely fashion. 

But I am concerned with Dr. Hill’s testimony in terms of participation of minority groups, and since the Acting Director and you 

all are not really from the Census Bureau, it wouldn’t do any good 

to say that what Dr. Hill is saying is what is needed to make sure 

that we don’t get an undercount. We need them involved, every 

group involved in every level of the Census steps, from the planning and the implementation, so that we can make sure that the 

Indians are counted, the Asians are counted, the Hispanics are 

counted, even the Appalachians are counted. We need to have everyone counted and my assessment of that is that there is a way 

of doing it and we ought to make sure that we also use minority 

contractors in order to reach those individuals. When all those 

monies are going to be spent, some of those dollars are going to 

23 

have to be given to the advertisers and marketing people and their 

various groups. 

So any comments on that? Ms. Bryant, you ran that. 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, I think our Census was the first one—Vince 

Barabba is not here to argue with me—that did use minority advertising contractors to produce the spots. As I say, we did not 

have paid advertising, but they produced very excellent spots that 

were—— 

Senator BURRIS. They just didn’t have time to run during the 

regular—— 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, they ran, but they ran at 3 o’clock in the 

morning. 

Senator BURRIS. Yes, I heard you say that. 

Pardon me. Dr. Hill, do you want to comment on that? 

Mr. HILL. Yes. In the 2000 Census, we used paid advertising for 

the first time and it was very effective because the REAC Committees recommended a number of these firms. Each of the minority 

firms targeted specially-prepared messages to their respective 

groups. For example, the African American ad firm not only targeted messages to African Americans, but also to black immigrants 

from the Caribbean and Continental Africa, such as Haitians, Nigerians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, etc. Thus, numerous focus groups 

were held with black non-immigrants and immigrants to develop 

culturally-sensitive messages. 

Senator BURRIS. Sure. 

Mr. HILL. The 2000 Census demonstrated that paid advertising 

works, since minority subcontractors targeted specially-developed 

messages for their groups. Paid advertising can be even more effective in the 2010 Census. 

Senator BURRIS. Are you still involved with the Census—— 

Mr. HILL. No, I am not currently a member of the 

AfricanAmerican Advisory Committee. I cycled off a few years ago. 

Senator BURRIS. Who is replacing you in terms—is there a Dr. 

Hill in the Census Bureau? [Laughter.] 

Mr. HILL. I am not familiar with the current members of the African American Advisory Committee. But those members usually 

span a cross-section of persons who represent many sectors, such 

as ministers, community-based groups, grassroots leaders, etc. 

Senator BURRIS. OK. Then, Mr. Powers, while technology has led 

to ambitious steps to administer the Census, are there any new 

ways we can employ to combat undercounting typically underrepresented—any technology. Is there any technological emphasis that 

we could use? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, I think clearly if you could have used the 

hand-helds for the non-response follow-up, I mean, any use of technology for going after the folks via non-response follow-up, there is 

potential there. We are back to paper-based operations there. So 

that is one area that you could potentially use—— 

Senator BURRIS. Well, Senator Coburn just raised his cell phone 

and said that technology could be used. Is there some kind of way 

we can get that information to the Acting Director so that they can 

start looking at what technology would be there available for—— 

24 

Mr. POWNER. What happened there, there was a plan to use that 

and then that contract ran into many problems that Chairman 

Carper looked at in great detail. 

Senator BURRIS. Oh, OK. 

Mr. POWNER. And what we did is reverted back to things they 

knew how to do with paper. But going forward, I think that is a 

very valid point, is we need to look at using technology—— 

Senator BURRIS. So can we look at that now? We have about 18 

months, you said, isn’t it? No, 12 months—— 

Mr. POWNER. I think now from a risk mitigation point of view, 

you probably want to stay the course, but you want to look at that 

for 2020. We mentioned the Internet. We mentioned using handhelds for more operations. I mean, we need to start thinking ahead 

for that. But right now, we are kind of in emergency management 

mode and I am not certain we would want to introduce that. 

Senator BURRIS. I mentioned the fact, too, that people might be 

afraid of their identity being stolen. Is there any technology that 

would try to ensure that when they give this information, it would 

say that it won’t be given to the Social Security Administration or 

the IRS? Individuals are going to be a little skeptical now that 

their identity could be swiped so easily. So is there any technology 

that we are looking at to protect that? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, clearly, I think there are human processes 

you want to have in place to protect identity theft. But from an information security point of view, all these systems need to be accredited and certified as secure to help avoid that situation. 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Senator Burris. 

At least one of our witnesses mentioned the importance of having 

a set term, maybe 5 years, for a Census Director, and I could think 

of arguments for doing that and I could think of arguments not to 

do that, but I would appreciate each of our witnesses saying whether or not you think that is a good idea. I think our Commissioner 

for the IRS, as I recall, now serves a 5-year term. We have some 

other positions where people serve terms, not uncommonly a 5-year 

term. The idea is to overlap from one Presidential term into the 

other to carry over. What do you all like about that idea, or on balance, what do you think you don’t like? 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, since I am the one that brought it up—— 

Senator CARPER. I thought you did. 

Ms. BRYANT [continuing]. The problem is the 10-year cycle of the 

Decennial Census and the 5-year cycle of the Economic Censuses 

is just out of tune with a 4-year cycle for the current appointment. 

As I say, I am the worst example since I got into office 3 weeks 

before the Census. 

Senator CARPER. I hope you were a quick study. I bet you were. 

You needed to be. 

Ms. BRYANT. I sure worked hard at it, with the help of John 

Thompson, I might say. He was my tutor on some of the statistical 

parts. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. 

Mr. Thompson, having tutored Ms. Bryant at an earlier stage in 

your life, what do you think of her idea? 

25 

Mr. THOMPSON. She is being very kind about who tutored who. 

I think that it is a very good idea to have a term appointment for 

the Director of the Census Bureau. It is very unsettling when you 

have one Director leave and another Director come in. There is a 

period where you don’t have leadership, and understanding exactly 

when that will happen and having a term, I think is very good. 

Senator CARPER. Any downside? 

Mr. THOMPSON. I don’t see any downside. 

Senator CARPER. All right. 

Ms. BRYANT. I will interject that this is being supported now by 

all seven past living Directors. 

Senator CARPER. All right. 

Ms. BRYANT. So bitter experience has told us this would be a 

good idea. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. 

Mr. Goldenkoff, do you have any thoughts? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It has the potential to provide that continuity 

that is so important. As we have said, the Census cycle, it is at 

least a 10-year cycle, so you need someone who is not really going 

to be a temporary employee, someone who is in and out. And I am 

not even sure of all the past Census Directors how many of them 

served as long as 4 years. If so, it is relatively rare. And so you 

need someone, certainly someone in place who has that continuity 

and has longer-term vision. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Any downsides you can think of? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Well, to the extent that—I am thinking about 

the legislation that has been proposed to make the Census Bureau 

an independent agency, of which that is a provision. It doesn’t necessarily follow that having a 5-year term of office would make the 

Census Bureau independent. I mean, there are other factors in 

play, and even those agencies that have a fixed term of office, they 

are just as susceptible to political influence, partisan influence, as 

agencies with a tenure that follows the President’s. So it is also a 

function of the personality of the Director, so—it is not a panacea, 

is my point. 

Senator CARPER. In the Department of Treasury, we have the 

Commissioner of the IRS, so you have a good point. 

Ms. BRYANT. And Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 

other big statistical agency. 

Senator CARPER. There you go. But I think maybe in each of 

those instances, certainly in IRS, the Department of Treasury, you 

have a Commissioner serving a 5-year term and the head of the 

Department is a political appointee who may not be there for 5 

years. 

Mr. Powner, any thoughts on this? 

Mr. POWNER. Yes. I think the continuity of the leadership is key 

and would be very supportive of that. We do a lot of work for you, 

Mr. Chairman, looking at the management of the IT budget, $70 

billion spent across all Federal agencies. This has been looked at 

with Federal CIOs. So if you are a political appointee, CIO, your 

average tenure is less than 2 years. If you are career, it is slightly 

over 2 years, but still less than 3 years. And I think it has been 

well accepted in that that 4 to 5 years would be much better to 

26 

have the continuity from a technology point of view and I think it 

applies here, also. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thank you. Dr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. So let me remark on that from my perspective. Continuity of leadership is really very important and I think you mentioned, or maybe Mr. Coburn, the fact that in many respects, the 

Census Bureau is a 20th Century vehicle operating in the 21st 

Century. I think part of the problem has to do with the lack of continuity in leadership, both at the top of the Bureau and a little bit 

further down in terms of research and development. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Dr. Hill, any thoughts on this idea 

of a 5-year term for the Director? 

Mr. HILL. I support it. Most critical decisions for the Census 

occur between 3 to 5 years before that Census. I think a 5-year 

term is in a good direction, and anything that would make it as 

nonpartisan as possible is preferred. 

Senator CARPER. OK. How about the idea that the Director of the 

Census should report directly to the President? I think that is in 

some legislation that the House is considering. And we have had 

it in—this Subcommittee is part of the Committee on Homeland 

Security and Governmental Affairs. Part of our jurisdiction is 

FEMA, and there has been a lot of discussion since Hurricane 

Katrina that the head of FEMA should report directly to, not to the 

Secretary of Homeland Security, but should report directly to the 

President, and that is a debate that is probably still going on in 

some circles. So it is not an argument that we hear just in the instance of the Census Bureau. 

But do we need to have, in your judgment, a situation where the 

head of the Census reports to the President as opposed to the Secretary of Commerce? 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, having the Census Bureau as an independent 

agency, as the National Science Foundation is, for example, another apolitical type of organization, would remove two layers of 

bureaucracy that the Census Director or anybody at the Census 

Bureau has to go through in order to talk to you in Congress, to 

talk to the press, and I am one for flattening organizations. 

Senator CARPER. Mr. Thompson, do you have any thoughts? 

Mr. THOMPSON. I really don’t have an opinion on that. 

Senator CARPER. Fair enough. Mr. Goldenkoff, any thoughts? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I think there would need to be some safeguards in place, with the Census, it is important to have impartial 

data, and so anything, even the appearance that there was some 

type of political influence going on could really undermine the 

credibility of Census data. So I think that you would want some 

type of White House oversight or a connection there. It should be 

on the management and operations, but it should stop at anything 

that has to do with the science of taking the Census. So it is just 

finding that right balance and having the appropriate safeguards 

in place and I think that is really what is critical. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. Mr. Powner, any 

thoughts? 

Mr. POWNER. I think you could be effective with either scenario. 

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27 

ship and the right management processes in place, and that has 

been the primary issue with the Census Bureau. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Dr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. I have really no thoughts about this. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Dr. Hill, any thoughts? 

Mr. HILL. I agree with Mr. Goldenkoff that more balance is needed. I am not certain whether it should be separate or part of the 

Commerce Department. I just think that, however it is structured, 

it should have the freedom to make independent programmatic decisions. 

Senator CARPER. All right. We have operated in the time I have 

been here in preparing for the upcoming Census where a Secretary 

of Commerce oversees his empire, which includes the Census Bureau, and there was a time when we realized, sitting in this room, 

the Secretary of Commerce wasn’t very mindful of those responsibilities, his oversight responsibilities in terms of providing directional leadership for the Bureau of the Census. 

Once we got his attention and once he focused on that responsibility, he was a great asset, going to the Administration, OMB, the 

President, and saying, we need extra resources, and some of you, 

I think Dr. Hill and others, said one of the primary recommendations you have is make sure we have the right resources to go out 

and do the job well. Once Secretary Gutierrez, to his credit, realized we had a problem here, he got engaged and helped us move 

that and worked with the appropriators to make sure we had the 

resources that were believed to be necessary. So it actually can be 

helpful in that regard. 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, when I talk about we are removing two levels 

of bureaucracy, that also means between the Census Bureau and 

the OMB, so another place. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. 

Others have sort of talked around this question and I just want 

to come back to it one more time. I think in Senator Burris’s questioning, he was asking Mr. Powner or Mr. Goldenkoff about actually acting now to better ensure that the technology that Dr. 

Coburn believes is available, that we actually put it to use now to 

get a better outcome for 2010. I think your response was, well, 

right now, let us just do what we said we were going to do and do 

that well, implement that well, test out the systems that still need 

to be tested out rather than starting anew. 

Any advice for us as we go through the next year or two doing 

well, counting well, accurately, and in a cost-effective way the people who live in this country, but is there anything that we ought 

to be mindful of doing to better ensure that when we get to 2020, 

we are not doing a Census that is at least part pencil and paper 

again? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I would agree with some of the comments that 

were made earlier. If you look at the way the Census is being conducted today, with the exception of some improvements in technology, it is basically the same approach that has been used since 

1970. We talked about there were some changes in advertising, but 

essentially it is a mail-out, mail-back operation and that approach 

has really exhausted its potential to count the Nation cost effecVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
28 

tively. The Bureau has to spend more money, work harder to get 

essentially the same result. 

So I think that we really need to look at what other approaches 

are out there that can either get better results or at least control 

the costs better, and whether that is administrative records or new 

uses of technology, maybe some of the rules of the Census need to 

be reexamined given changes in society. Does it make sense to 

knock on a door six times during non-response follow-up? You have 

reached the point of diminishing returns on that. All these things 

probably need to be on the table and should be reexamined. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Any other thoughts on this? 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, I think a lot of people would respond on the 

Internet and we wouldn’t have to do all this mail-out, mail-back, 

so forth and so on. However, I am not sure that will help on reducing undercount because there is a skew on who uses the Internet. 

Mr. BROWN. That is true. There is at least one aspect that has 

been mentioned to us where it could be quite helpful because if you 

have Internet response option, it is easy to incorporate Hispanic, 

Spanish and other foreign languages—— 

Ms. BRYANT. Languages, yes. 

Mr. BROWN [continuing]. And it also can be easier for proxies to 

help people fill out and respond. So there are ways in which the 

Internet can help, although the primary target population is probably—it is probably more an issue of cost saving than response improvement. 

Senator CARPER. OK. All right. Thank you. 

Given the cost of the Census in an era of unprecedented fiscal 

challenges, what are the cost drivers of the Census and how can 

the Bureau produce an accurate yet cost-effective Census? Anyone 

at all? 

Ms. BRYANT. Well, unfortunately, cost cutting was precluded by 

that Supreme Court decision because the most expensive thing is 

going after the non-respondents. The design of 2000 included sampling the non-respondents and estimating the rest and that got 

shot down by the Congress sending up a bill to the Supreme Court 

that the Supreme Court supported. 

Senator CARPER. Well, it sounds to me like part of what you all 

have said, a number of you said, one, make sure that—the key here 

is to try to reduce the number of people that aren’t responding. A 

good ad campaign properly conceived and implemented, I think can 

help on that. The idea of these partnerships that we talked about 

earlier and making sure that if we are interested especially and we 

have low response rates from, we will say, African Americans, from 

Latino Americans, from Native Americans, to make sure that we 

are involving, I think as Dr. Hill said, make sure that we are involving folks maybe who do public relations campaigns, public outreach campaigns, to make sure that we have included in folks who 

are formulating those campaigns folks whose background is maybe 

similar to those ethnic groups. 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I think one—I would like to add to that a little 

bit, though. We know what some of the major cost drivers are, nonresponse follow-up probably being the largest cost driver. One of 

the things that the Bureau has—can do a better job of is identifying where it gets the most bang for the buck. It has a number 

29 

of repetitive operations, and it is probably a good thing to have 

some redundancy in addressing building operations. However, in 

2000, I think there were about a dozen different operations to build 

the address list. Well, do you need all of them? 

I think what the Bureau has not really done a good job of is identifying where it gets the most results from, and that is true with 

the way it builds the address list, advertising, where does it get the 

most bang for the buck in terms of advertising. Is it paid advertising or is it through very locally-targeted partnership efforts? So 

maybe that is something the Bureau should be thinking about now, 

is how to evaluate, working on evaluation so that come 2020, they 

will have a better idea of where to invest their resources. 

Senator CARPER. That is a very good point. 

Any other thoughts on this question? All right. 

I have two more, two more to go. In April, like next month, the 

Bureau is scheduled to begin its address canvassing. That is an operation that in total requires some 140,000 temporary workers who 

rely on hand-held computers to verify addresses and map information to update the Bureau’s master address file and digital maps. 

And this maybe should be as much a question for our friends from 

GAO as not, but are you confident that the hand-helds will perform 

as expected? 

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I think that we have more confidence than we 

did last summer. The Bureau conducted an operational field test 

back in December. It was in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And certainly some of the problems and issues with the data transmission, 

the unreliability, did not recur in Fayetteville. But what the Bureau demonstrated by that in a large degree was that under conditions similar to Fayetteville, the hand-helds will work. 

Obviously, the country is very different in respects from Fayetteville. There are urban areas. There are suburban areas. And that 

is the big unknown right now. And so they have made progress, 

and I think that is commendable from where they were back in the 

summer, but overall success is still an open question. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Anybody else on this one? 

All right. The Administration’s fiscal year 2010 budget doesn’t 

propose increasing recruitment and hiring of Census takers for 

non-response follow-up as Congress envisioned in approving extra 

funds for the Census in the stimulus package. One of you mentioned, I think, $1 billion was added in the stimulus package for 

this purpose. Would the Census Bureau be better able to meet the 

challenge of lower-than-projected mail response if it could recruit 

and hire additional field staff heading into peak Census operations 

in 2010? 

Mr. HILL. Yes. We keep coming back to the non-response followup. One of the biggest obstacles to an accurate Census count is the 

high turnover of enumerators. However, the depressed economy 

should result in an influx of Census workers and greater stability 

and continuity. A major priority of the 2010 Census should be to 

increase the continuity of Census takers and to reduce the historic 

high turnover rates, especially in inner-city areas. 

Senator CARPER. Yes, sir? 

Mr. THOMPSON. I think this would be a really good question to 

ask the Census Bureau for the following reasons. They do have 

30 

plans in terms of they understand how many people they have to 

recruit, how many they have to hire. They understand pay rates. 

But it would be good if they would come before you and explain 

their assumptions and rationale so that you would feel comfortable 

that they have thought through the process or the numbers that 

they have and what they have budgeted for the recruiting and hiring. In 2000, we had enough funding from the Congress that we 

were able to put that operation together. 

Senator CARPER. All right. One last thing. Do you all have anything you would like to add? We had, I think, a very good discussion here. Anything that comes to mind that you say, oh, I wish 

I had said this? Usually, when I walk out of here, I think, boy, I 

wish I had said that or asked something else. Anything you all 

want to add as take-away? No? OK. 

A couple of thoughts. Let me just kind of wrap up what I think 

I have heard here. One is everybody says we need a first-rate Director of the Census Bureau and we need him or her right now. 

Second, I think what I have heard is, for the most part, people 

say we want to make sure that whoever is leading this operation 

has the resources, human resources and financial resources and 

technology resources to do the job as best we can, to make sure we 

count as closely as we can the number of people who live in this 

country and do it in a cost-effective way. 

I think I have heard here that we maybe ought to give serious 

consideration to whoever is going to be serving as our Census Bureau Directors in the future to be nominated and confirmed to 

serve a multi-year period of time, maybe 5 years, maybe something 

more or less. Sort of a mixed bag in terms of whether or not we 

need a direct report from the Census Bureau directly to the White 

House. 

I take away from here the importance of having an ad campaign 

and a well thought-out ad campaign, particularly involving in the 

creation of the ad campaign folks who can better design the campaign to go after our target audience of people that aren’t responding. 

I mentioned earlier the American Legacy Foundation where I 

was privileged to serve as their founding Vice Chairman back in 

the late 1990s, right at the turn of the century, and the folks who 

developed the advertisements to young people were not, as I said, 

adults, not for the most part. Actually, the ideas came from the 

kids. Literally, the ideas came from the teenagers and they worked 

with ad agencies, but the raw product ideas came from the kids. 

The testing was on the kids, teenagers and so forth, even younger 

than that. But that is a message or a lesson that I am taking away 

from here. 

A couple of others, as well. I won’t go any further, but I think 

just a lot of good reminders here. I was talking to a friend of mine 

today about basketball and he was talking about more games are 

won in the planning of the game. I think he was talking about 

Bobby Knight. Remember Bobby Knight at the Indiana University, 

later was at Texas Tech—was it Texas Tech? Was that where he 

went? But he didn’t always have the best team on the floor, but 

he always had the best plan going into a game of just about anyVerDate Nov 24 2008 14:50 Jun 30, 2009 Jkt 049639 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\49639.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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body. That is why he was so successful. I think having a good plan 

here is valuable. 

I think another good idea that we had was that a good deal of 

our operation—the program hasn’t been actually tested operationally and we have a fair amount of work still to do there before we 

are ready for prime time. A whole bunch of good ideas. 

One of the things I am inclined to do, I have asked you to provide for me two good names by close of business tomorrow of folks 

that we could submit to the Administration as a talent pool in case 

they need some help in that regard. 

The other thing I might do, once we have got somebody who has 

been nominated, vetted, confirmed, in office, we might want to pull 

you back together again, maybe just on the phone, not even in person, maybe just do it on the phone in some kind of teleconference 

call to spend some time with some of us, our staff, the new Director, maybe a person or two from his or her team, just to go through 

again some of these points. I just think that might be time well 

spent. And if you might find time to do that with us, I would be 

grateful. 

And you are going to get a couple of questions from people who 

are Members, some who were here and some who weren’t, but 

some follow-up questions. We would ask that you respond to those 

promptly. I think we are going to leave the record open for 2 weeks 

for that, so if you get any follow-up questions from us, please respond to them promptly. 

Are we forgetting anything here? All right. It has been a very 

good hearing, timely, and I think most informative, and we are 

grateful to you for spending your time with us and thank you for 

your ideas and input and for your willingness to give us some help 

between sundown now and sundown tomorrow, and also maybe 

your willingness to join us in a conversation with the new Director. 

Hopefully, he is going to be identified, vetted, confirmed soon. 

Thank you very much. 

With that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:11 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(33) 

A P P E N D I X 


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Æ 


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