U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

70–439 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF

NON-RESPONSE FOLLOW-UP

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 5, 2000

Serial No. 106–191

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

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

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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

——— ———

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JANE COBB, Staff Director

LARA CHAMBERLAIN, Professional Staff Member

AMY ALTHOFF, Professional Staff Member

ANDREW KAVALIUNAS, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

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C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 5, 2000 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of the Census; John H. Thompson,

Associate Director for Decennial Census; and Marvin D. Raines, Associate Director for Field Operations ................................................................ 73

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

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

of New York:

Article dated May 4, 2000 ........................................................................ 17

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 22

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

Congressman Tom Davis radio address .................................................. 3

Executive state of the Census report ....................................................... 9

Information concerning invasion of privacy ............................................ 7

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 11

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, Bureau of the Census:

Letter dated July 6, 2000 ......................................................................... 84

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 32

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OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF

NON-RESPONSE FOLLOW-UP

FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

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

of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Miller and Maloney.

Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Chip Walker, deputy

staff director; Lara Chamberlain and Amy Althoff, professional

staff members; Mike Miguel, senior data analyst; Andrew

Kavaliunas, clerk; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority

professional staff members; and Earley Green, minority assistant

clerk.

Mr. MILLER. Good morning. Welcome to the May hearing with

Director Prewitt on the status of the decennial census. We will

begin with opening statements, and then we will have a chance for

Mrs. Maloney and myself to ask some questions of Director

Prewitt.

Thank you, Director Prewitt, for once again being here. Since we

last met, the Census Bureau has reported on the final numbers for

the mail response rates. The final mail response rate of 65 percent

will be at least 4 percentage points above what the Bureau had

budgeted for. As you have said, Director Prewitt, this was no small

achievement. The mail response rate had been in steady decline

since 1970. In the absence of significant improvements, the mail response rate would have been expected to be in the neighborhood of

55 percent this time.

The Census Bureau is to be commended for halting the slide in

civic participation in the mail out/mail back phase of the census.

I firmly believe that the combination of community partnerships,

paid advertising and a strong commitment to the census by Congress—which in the end will have appropriated almost $6.8 billion,

have all contributed to the better than expected mail response rate.

A story in yesterday’s New York Times reported that all signs seem

to indicate that the outreach advertising and partnership programs

have succeeded in raising the response rates for those missed in

the 1990 census or at least preventing them from declining. This

is significant since Republicans have maintained that if we funded

the proper outreach and promotion programs, we could reach the

undercounted. I’m gratified to see we were right.

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I am, though, still disappointed that three significant programs

were not included in this census. A second mailing, which easily

could have boosted response percentage rates into the 70’s, based

on the results of the address rehearsal, the use of administrative

records and the ability of local governments to check the Census

Bureau’s work. In fact, on the final issue of post census local review, a local government in the Tampa area has already decided

to sue the Census Bureau.

Director Prewitt, in a letter dated April 14, I asked that you reprogram the budgetary savings from an increased mail response

rate to reach those groups that are traditionally undercounted. In

that letter I estimated the savings to be about $34 million for every

percentage point above 61 percent. This estimate was based on a

report issued by the General Accounting Office in December 1999.

I also explained that I would be of any assistance in gaining approval from the Congress to transfer money between frame works.

To date my help has not been solicited. And in a written response

to me you also noted that although you believed there would be

budgetary savings, you believe that the GAO estimate may not be

accurate because of a lower than expected enumerator productivity

rate.

Fair enough. I want to be clear on one point. This chairman and

this Congress expect you to use all of the tools in your tool box to

reach the undercounted. This windfall in your budget is expected

to be used directly to reach those not counted during the mail response phase of the census and those traditionally undercounted.

This opportunity must not go to waste. It would not be acceptable

to miss our objectives and have funding left to spare. More advertising, more outreach, higher pay rates and special enumeration

techniques must be considered to help eliminate the differential

undercount during the most difficult part of the full enumeration,

non-response follow-up.

And speaking of non-response follow-up, I was delighted that the

House leadership devoted part of the Republican radio address on

April 22 delivered by Congressman Tom Davis, a member of this

committee, saying,

Next week, hundreds of thousands of enumerators will fan out across the country

to find those not already counted. These enumerators are your neighbors and

friends, co-workers and family. When an enumerator comes to your door, please cooperate by giving them a few minutes of your time and answering their questions.

By law your answers are kept strictly confidential. Your census answers are important to allocate seats in Congress and to help government officials determine where

to build roads, day-care facilities and schools. In the upcoming weeks, if you should

encounter a census worker, please thank them for their effort and dedication to the

2000 census.

I want to personally thank Congressman Davis for delivering

this important message.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Director Prewitt, there remains a great deal of debate surrounding the long form. This subcommittee has been trying

to get a handle on just what is fueling this debate. Is there really

a legitimate feeling out in the public that the long form questions

are intrusive? Or, as some have charged, is this debate being fueled

by a few elected officials who have expressed concerns for their constituents’ privacy worries?

Dr. Prewitt, when you came before the subcommittee about a

month ago, and in numerous public events since, you cited a poll

by InterSurvey. You have claimed that people’s uneasiness about

the long form jumped the week congressional leaders made their

remarks. What you neglected to say was that in fact the bump in

concerns coincided with the arrival of census questionnaires in people’s homes.

When we went back and looked at the polling data, it shows that

the rate of concern had actually reached 18 percent by March 26— before the comments by Senator Lott and Governor Bush were

widely reported in the press. The reason why the previous surveys

showed the lower levels of concerns was because the forms had yet

to be mailed. What’s more, the very next week after what was supposedly alarming remarks, the concern rate over the long form fell

2 percentage points. I am very disappointed that you were not

more forthright regarding this poll which is being conducted in conjunction with the Census Bureau. Since April 18th, you have

known that your worries about the long form have been ‘‘resolved,’’ and that long and short form return rates have exceeded your expectations. Yet you have continued to express concerns about the

long form and blame Republicans for their comments.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. I can only conclude that since your public comments

do not match your own internal information, you are attempting to

politicize the census at this crucial period of time.

Director Prewitt, let me call your attention to the next chart.

This is a copy of page 5 of the April 18 Executive State of the Census report produced by the Census Bureau. It clearly states that

issue regarding the long form response had been resolved.

Resolved, Long Form Response Rate—The difference between the response rate

for the long form and short form has been greater than expected. We were concerned because conducting proportionally more long form interviews affect productivity in non-response follow-up. Resolution: By April 18, both the long form return

rate and short form return rate have exceeded our goals.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. While internally this issue is, ‘‘unresolved,’’ you

have continued to overstate the problem. I have to say that I am

disappointed that the head of an agency that prides itself on accuracy and quality of data would succumb to these political temptations. At the same time, I realize that you are a political appointee

of President Clinton, and as such, are subject to the influences of

this administration.

As I have said before, this administration is as much to blame

for these increasing privacy concerns as anyone is. From the Pentagon to the White House, this administration has demonstrated time

and time again that it only believes in privacy when it is politically

expedient. President Clinton and Vice President Gore must be paying attention to the current privacy issues regarding the long form

because they have just launched a new privacy initiative. I find

this almost laughable considering the breaches of trust this administration has been accustomed to.

Let me also say how deeply concerned I am about the accidental

faxing of confidential information to a private household that recently occurred in Congressman Coburn’s district. For our viewing

and listening audience let me give some of the facts as reported in

the Phoenix newspaper earlier this week.

A Census Bureau employee at the regional office accidentally

dialed in a wrong fax number and faxed information on Census Bureau applicants to a private household instead of another census office. This information included names, addresses, test scores and

Social Security numbers and is protected by the Privacy Act. The

fax was then given to Congressman Coburn and that is how this

serious breach of security, even if accidental, came to light.

I have been a staunch defender of the Bureau’s commitment to

privacy, but frankly that confidence has been shaken. You cannot

placate Members of Congress and the American people who have

expressed concerns about privacy and confidentiality on the one

hand and then allow this kind of thing to happen on the other. I

certainly can’t assure people with the same level of confidence I

had a week ago about the Bureau’s ability to protect their privacy.

Director Prewitt, the Founding Fathers were very wise. I now

know that the real reason we only conduct the census every 10

years is because no one can possibly go through this process yearly,

whether on your side or mine. This has been truly an arduous task,

but it is made more difficult when we see a pattern of behavior

that lends itself to partisan politics. You made a commitment to be

nonpartisan, and I will hold you to it.

Mrs. Maloney.

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

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Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On April 27th, the most critical and labor intensive phase of census 2000 began, as census takers fanned out across America to

visit those households which did not mail back their questionnaires. These next 10 weeks will undoubtedly be the most difficult

faced by the Bureau during the 2000 census.

I urge all Americans to cooperate with these census takers—people from their own communities who have undergone a security

screening and who will be easily identifiable.

For the most part, these workers are your neighbors and friends,

hired from the local community because they know its streets and

neighborhoods, speak its languages, and are familiar with its cultures.

Your cooperation is vital to the success of the 2000 census. Your

answers are strictly confidential. No other government agency or

private individual will see your answers—not the IRS, the FBI, the

INS, or the CIA. Please cooperate if an enumerator knocks on your

door.

When you look back only a few months, the two biggest unanswered questions that had the potential to threaten the success of

the census were what would the mail response rate be and would

we be able to hire enough qualified workers to do non-response follow-up in the midst of this incredible economy?

Well, we now have the answer to both of these questions.

First, the Census Bureau through its remarkable advertising

campaign and community outreach efforts has reached a 66 percent

mail response rate for the 2000 census, an outstanding achievement which has reversed the decades-long decline in the participation of the American people with the census.

Second, as a result of careful planning, the Bureau has recruited

108 percent of its national hiring goal and I must say, Director,

that having met many of these enumerators while working with

the chairman on homeless night here in the district and while visiting with workers in Queens and Manhattan, I am really impressed

with the people you have recruited.

The commitment and energy that they show to the task of counting America is inspiring given what I know is a challenging job of

knocking on doors and trying to get people, especially New Yorkers,

to take a minute and talk to you.

I would like, Mr. Chairman, to place in the record an article from

yesterday’s Boston Globe written by an enumerator that I think

captures the spirit shown by enumerators. How hard they are

working and how dedicated they are to their job, both counting

Americans and keeping the information strictly confidential.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. MALONEY. These accomplishments are truly good news, and

I must commend Dr. Prewitt, Marvin Raines, John Thompson and

the entire decennial staff, and every employee of the Census Bureau, both permanent and temporary, for a job well done so far.

It appears that the census is on track.

Obviously in any operation as large as this there are going to be

problems, problems that I am sure the chairman’s questions will

bring out in detail. But to me it seems that you and the staff have

tried to meet these challenges head on, that you have been quick

to inform the chairman and the public of the problems, something

I don’t think many organizations would do in such a quick and

complete manner. You have warned us of what you think the challenges will be.

So while the news nationally is indeed good, it still means that

a lot of work needs to be done, over a third of America’s households

must still receive a visit from the census taker. That’s 42 million

doors that need to be knocked on. I look forward to hearing from

you, Dr. Prewitt, on how the next aspect of the census is coming

and what we can expect.

But I really want to respond to some of the statements that

Chairman Miller just made. I only want to speak for myself. I have

never said that statements of Governor Bush, Senator Lott and

Speaker Hastert, along with a dozen additional Members of Congress, are solely to blame for the privacy issues which have been

raised about the census. But I must say, and I think the facts are

very clear and speak for themselves, that the leadership of the Republican Party in the middle of a national civic ceremony in a national effort to count every single person in our country, to get vital

information about our country so that we can plan and distribute

Federal dollars fairly, they decided in the midst of this campaign

to count everyone to go negative. They decided that they would not

support this national effort but would trash it. They didn’t show

leadership and they didn’t explain that all of this information is

completely protected. What they did was pander to talk shows and

right wing fringe groups. What they have done—and I would like

to put in this record what they have done—in the midst of this is

send out fundraising appeals calling it the Republican census document. That is what their effort is in the middle of this national

civic ceremony.

I really believe very strongly that privacy is a tremendously important issue to every person in America, and I feel strongly about

privacy and along with the leadership on the Banking Committee

in a bipartisan way, Chairman Leach and many Democrats, and I

was part of that effort, worked to put forward privacy language in

the banking modernization bill.

The President has come forward with even more language on

protection of financial information and he has put that before Congress and I will be a cosponsor of it. On another committee that

I work on, Chairman Burton’s committee, there have been many,

many hearings on privacy over health records, and in a bipartisan

way working with Chairman Horn, we have had many hearings

and put forward legislation and worked for privacy in a bipartisan

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But the census is protected. The confidentiality is protected and

it is important for planning for our country, and as we have said

many, many times, the questions on the census form are exactly

the same questions on the long form that President Reagan and

President Bush and every Member of Congress that got 3 years notice endorsed. It is even shorter than the form that went out in

1990. The only new question was added in response, as we know,

to the welfare reform in a bipartisan way to get a tracking of how

many grandparents are taking care of children. So I must say that

the timing of the national Republican leadership in the midst of

the most sensitive time during the mail back response time to basically call the census optional was just plain wrong.

May I put in the record the Republican national—it is called the

Republican Census Document.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney and the information referred to follow:]

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Mr. MILLER. Without objection.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you.

Mr. MILLER. Well, I must take the chairman’s prerogative to respond briefly to this. I am very disappointed. To say that the Republican leadership trashed the census, that is extreme political

rhetoric. I am extremely disappointed. ‘‘Trashed the census?’’ Mrs.

Maloney, the Speaker had a press conference with me a couple of

weeks ago. We took time on the Saturday radio response to talk

about the census. We provided every penny the Bureau has asked

for. They may have been given more money. And to say that we

trashed it is wrong.

When Members of Congress are responding to concerns of constituents, that is what Members of Congress are supposed to do.

And then when we talk about this letter that was sent out, we

have invested over $7 billion in the census and I take my role very

seriously, and I try not to interject partisan politics in the process.

So when the Southeastern Legal Foundation mailing went out, I

put aside the fact that this group was responsible for a major ruling by the Supreme Court regarding the census. Their mailing did

cross the line and I said so.

I didn’t stick my head in the sand and blindly defend them, but

any person looking at a mailing from the Republican National

Committee talking about a Republican, unless you want to have a

bill banning everybody from using the word census or Census Bureau, this is clearly—it took the Postal Service less than a day or

so to say there was no rule broken. This is a frivolous claim made

in an obvious attempt to score political points, and I would like to

call upon my colleagues to join with me in stopping to play politics.

Director Prewitt, would you and Mr. Raines—— Mrs. MALONEY. May I respond?

Mr. MILLER. Let’s get moving with the opening statements. Director Prewitt, would you rise, and Mr. Thompson and Mr. Raines.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MILLER. Let the record note that they have answered in the

affirmative. We appreciate that all of you are here again today.

Director Prewitt, next week you have been asked to serve jury

duty, and there can’t be a busier person in America right now in

the middle of the census than the Director of the Census Bureau,

but as we have all talked about the civic responsibility of the census, it is a civic responsibility to serve our communities on jury

duty. So I commend your willingness to step aside from your responsibilities as Director so you can serve on the jury, and thank

you.

Thank you once again for being here and you have an opening

statement. The official statement of course will be entered in the

record.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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STATEMENTS OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF

THE CENSUS; JOHN H. THOMPSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

FOR DECENNIAL CENSUS; AND MARVIN D. RAINES, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR FIELD OPERATIONS

Mr. PREWITT. If I may read a very quick opening statement and

take an extra minute or two to address some of the questions that

you raised in your opening statement.

Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Maloney, members of the subcommittee, I

am pleased to be here today to provide an update on the status of

the census activities. Last week I had the honor to report the good

news about the state of civic responsibility in our country. The

country has stopped a 30-year decline in census cooperation, slightly reversed the decline, and this is a serious achievement.

In reaching the 66 percent mail back response rate, the public

outperformed expectations. More than 100,000 census partners deserve credit. Congratulations are owed to thousands of mayors,

commissioners, teachers, community advocates, houses of worship

and other civic business leaders. We thank our partner agencies for

the excellent advertising campaign and to you, Mr. Chairman, Mrs.

Maloney, other Members of Congress, who encouraged response to

the census. Our partners and the public have treated the census

as a serious civic event intended by the founders.

The good news about the mail response rate is tempered by our

concerns about long form noncooperation and potential loss of data.

As I explained at the last hearing, every question we asked in the

census serves an important purpose and all have a specific Federal

or judicial mandate or requirement. Very early this year an advocacy group issued a press release that said as follows: ‘‘real Americans don’t answer nosy census questions. You can strike a blow for

privacy, equality and liberty by refusing to answer every question

on the census form except the one required by the Constitution:

How many people live in your home?’’ This is a misreading of the

Constitution, which states that the census is to be conducted ‘‘in

such manner as [Congress] shall by law direct.’’ The mistaken

reading of the Constitution ignores the fact that the Nation’s

founders and its first Congress directed the tabulation of the population by such characteristics as age, gender, race and household

composition. Every census has been more than a simple head

count. Moreover, the misguided advice on how to respond to the

census is a prescription not only for poor data quality but for increased undercount.

If people do not cooperate with the census at all, or just give us

a number of persons in the household, whether when they return

the form by mail or when the enumerator visits, that will not be

sufficient. Beyond the number of people at an address, we require

some minimal characteristics to complete an enumeration. Otherwise we have no way to know whether we are dealing with real

people. In cases where no cooperation is forthcoming, we will have

to attempt to get the data through interviews with other knowledgeable individuals.

We are also concerned about potential loss of data due to opposition to the long form. There was approximately a 12 percentage

point difference between the mail response rates for the long form

and short form, double the 1990 rate. We do not have data at this

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point about item nonresponse rates. That is, for example, how

many people who mailed back the long form did not answer specific

questions, such as income, disability, education and so on. Comments we have received give us reason to be concerned about the

long form problem.

Let me cite just two of these comments. ‘‘I have this day read my

long form and promptly ripped it in two and burned same. Don’t

bother sending another as I won’t fill it out nor will I pay the $100

fine.’’ Second, ‘‘I am refusing to complete the long form. You can arrest

me if you want, but I am not going to complete it.’’ Obviously this

is a very small sample from a large number. We are very concerned

that refusal to respond fully to the census can pose a serious risk

to census 2000 data. As I previously testified, the Census Bureau

would have to determine whether the data are sufficiently reliable

to perform the functions expected of them.

Let me turn to an operational update. In each of the hearings

that have tracked census operations, I have identified problems

that could put the census at risk in the period following the hearing. Thus in the last hearing I listed as potential problems the failure to complete the update leave operation, problems with our payroll system, widespread problems filling our enumerator positions,

problems with the address file, breakdown of our telephone questionnaire assistance operation, breakdown of data capture, questionnaire delivery and unexpectedly low mail response rates or any

event such as a hacker on our Internet site. None of those potential

problems has occurred. Every major census operation scheduled for

completion is either now complete or in its final stages. This includes update leave, remote Alaska, service based enumeration,

military enumeration, foreign language questionnaires and others.

And I can provide details if you wish.

Now we, of course, enter the nonresponse followup operation,

which is the largest, most complex and most costly operation of

census 2000. It raises its own set of potential risks, and I take this

hearing as an opportunity to put those on the record. These would

include high turnover rates for enumerators, more outright resistance from respondents that could affect productivity or data quality, a breakdown in our payroll system or random events such as

attacks on enumerators or natural disasters. Turnover has been

very low in early census operations such as update/leave, but nonresponse followup is a more difficult and frustrating operation. The

controversy over the long form, as I have said, gives us some reason to be concerned about resistance and data quality. Our payroll

system has worked very well so far, but nonresponse followup is

such a big operation that it will be a major test for that system.

So, we face potential risks during nonresponse followup that could

affect accuracy, data quality and budget.

I want to emphasize that the Census Bureau will fully apply its

procedures to account for every address that is on our list to be visited during nonresponse followup. These procedures are extensive

and include making up to six attempts, three by personal visit and

three by phone when a phone number is available, to complete the

enumeration of a household. These procedures also include extensive quality assurance procedures and supervisory controls but

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they also reflect our experience that the longer we are in the field

and the farther we get from census day the more the quality of respondent’s answer deteriorates.

It is important to keep in mind that we are using a part-time

temporary staff to which we have been able to provide only basic

training in survey methods. Extending nonresponse followup beyond the already extensive level of effort we plan would not only

increase census cost but it could lead to a reduction in data quality.

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate your letter with respect to directing

the resources obviously to the hard to enumerate areas, and that

is what we are doing. I have not directly responded to you on a

framework reprogramming. It is not a framework issue at this

stage, but certainly we are putting the money in those areas. We

have raised enumerator pay rates in about 10 percent of our LCOs,

including Tampa.

The preparation for and launching of nonresponse followup is

very time sensitive and it had to be completed in a few days so we

could begin training on time. While it was going on, we continued

to receive mail responses. Some of those made it into our late mail

return files, but some did not. Some people who have mailed back

their form will be visited in nonresponse followup. We realize this

will irritate some members of the public who will wonder why we

are bothering them again. There had to be a cutoff date to begin

preparing the assignments and to get all of the maps and kits to

the right training sites. We do the best we can to strike the late

forms that come in to the nonresponse followup universe, but clearly cannot do so for all late returns. Forms are still coming in. We

have also received be counted forms that do not have identification

codes. These require a labor intensive matching and place coding

operation to code them to the right geographic area. So this sometimes correct complaint that I have already sent the form in is

something our enumerators are trained to deal with. Of course they

will try to complete an enumeration at these housing units anyway

because many will say that they have returned a questionnaire

even when they haven’t.

We have sufficient staff to begin nonresponse followup on schedule in every census office in the country. We have frontloaded our

training selections, which means that our goal is to train and give

assignments to twice as many people as we needed. That way, we

will have staff to offset attrition. We have identified over 50,000 individuals for replacement training so we can keep replenishing the

pool of available workers. We have retained this 2 to 1 redundancy

at the vast majority of sites. Across the national system, we are at

3 to 1 redundancy. We have 3 times the number of enumerators

already hired. So that simply means we have more people out

there, and we will have the opportunity to accelerate the completion in as many LCOs as possible.

Nevertheless we continue to recruit in targeted areas even as we

speak. This may mean in the end that some qualified job applicants may not be hired. We realize they will be disappointed, but

we believe we must keep the applicant pool active to assure we

have sufficient staff to cover attrition. Thus far, we have identified

2.6 million qualified applicants or 108 percent of our goal.

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To place nonresponse followup in context, appendix 1 graphically

depicts each of the major census enumeration operations that precede and follow it. On these operational issues, I will take your

questions.

May I ask for a few moments to address the question that you

raised about the politicization of the conversation about long and

short form. Let me first bring to your attention what—the second

of your graphs, it was the census report that you referred to and

just interpret that so you will see what that means.

What that ESOC report of April 18 reported was that based on

our nonresponse followup workload, the fact that we received at

that time a more than 4 percent increase over our expected mail

back response rate, meant that we were now convinced that completing nonresponse followup on schedule was not at risk. That is

all that meant. We didn’t resolve any issue about the long and

short form differential. It meant in terms of our overall response,

it was above the level that we needed to set. It says nothing about

data quality and completeness of the long form data. We may well

have a data quality problem but we simply don’t know that yet.

So it is disingenuous to say that we have resolved the problem.

We don’t know. We have resolved the problem of nonresponse followup as best as we can at this stage.

Let me turn to the other concerns that you expressed and I appreciate the seriousness of them and I would like to take a moment

to address them. First, I have to say that perhaps it is an accident

or perhaps it is not an accident, that nothing in your prepared comments that you just read from quote me as calling into question the

leadership of the Republican Party. There is no quote available to

have put into these comments because my comments have never

addressed the role of the Republican leadership; and, therefore, I

have to express some concern that you have chosen to interpret my

public comments as chastising or otherwise criticizing the Republican leadership. If I have, I ask you for that quote, whether it was

in a press conference or report or testimony. I don’t believe such

a quote exists. There may have been newspaper articles that have

implied that, but that is not what I have said. Because I don’t believe that I have said that, sir.

I want to say what I have said publicly. What I have said is that

national public voices, which certainly includes some of the leading

members who have control over the airwaves, talk show hosts, 60

Minutes, have undermined, as far as I am concerned, the seriousness of the census and they did so during a key period, and whether that is the third or fourth week of the census is not the moment

I was addressing. I was addressing the moment that this conversation began to occur publicly.

I have also said, and here I have referenced national political

leaders, not just public voices, I have said that at a key moment

in the census, approximately March 27 to April 2 or 3, we had the

full attention of the American people, the full attention of the

American people on the census. This is a remarkable accomplishment. All of our information on exposure and awareness suggest

that 97, 98, 99 percent of the American people were aware of the

census. I believe that was a moment when we could have had an

important conversation with the American public about the fact

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that democracy has to do with rights and responsibilities as well

as benefits. I believe we missed that opportunity. I believe in that

key week that what could have happened—we could have said look,

the census is part of the responsibility of belonging to this country.

And that was not a good moment to talk about the census as a

pick-and-choose opportunity. If you don’t like it, don’t worry about

fully cooperating. That was not a good moment for those voices to

be heard.

My concern and what I expressed in public shortly after that was

out of the disappointment of a bipartisan passed Senate resolution

on the floor which subsequently was removed in committee, and I

appreciate the efforts that went into removing that from the committee, but the floor nevertheless in a bipartisan vote said, well,

the census after all could be thought of as a form of harassment,

these enumerators knocking on your door, that it is not something

that should be mandatory.

The reason that the census is mandatory, it is not a law I passed,

it is to signal that it is a serious part of what it means to be part

of this country. Here was a bipartisan passed Senate resolution

that said, well, no, I guess we don’t need it after all. It is not to

be mandatory.

So when I said publicly I was disappointed in national political

leaders, that was not a partisan statement. This was a very bipartisan statement. So I would have to ask you if you want to say that

I have politicized the census, I need to hear from you the exact

quote, either in a press conference, before a hearing or in any other

public setting where I have blamed any Republican leader, and I

don’t believe that you will find that quote.

Mr. MILLER. We have several quotes that we will give to you. I

don’t think maybe you used the word Republican, but you say, ‘‘Here is a moment when our national leadership could have explained.’’ The inference is to the Republicans, and when the articles

come out in the paper, they come out different than maybe you

think that they come out. ‘‘A garbled message was sent.’’ ‘‘Here is

a moment when our national leadership could have explained what

serious role this information is in our economy or society. That

voice was either silent or it was pandering to talk show hosts.’’

That was before the Census Advisory Committee. When you talk

about the InterSurvey, the inference was it was because of the remarks. The remarks were on March 30, and the survey showed

long form privacy concerns jumped to 18 percent prior to March 30.

So what happened was, when I look at the data, when the forms

got in the mail, people received them, and then had concerns about

privacy. It was after the forms arrived, that is the 18 percent, and

then afterwards there were some comments by Senator Lott and

Governor Bush.

But I think you have been repeating—blaming in effect Republicans for pandering to talk show hosts. None of us can control talk

show hosts. They get under my skin, too. But there are articles in

several papers. Here is one from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel.

‘‘Some Republican leaders view the census as an invasion of privacy and urge Americans not to answer questions that they consider too personal. That pulled the entire response rate down for

the country, Prewitt said Wednesday.’’

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Mr. PREWITT. That is an incorrect quote. I did not say that.

Mr. MILLER. That is what is being reported. I think you have already said that if you don’t want to fill out a question, at least give

us enough information for apportionment purposes. I used the illustration that my neighbor doesn’t want to give her phone number

and income—fill out the rest. You know I have been advocating for

people to complete the forms as best they can, and I know you

never accused me of anything—but let me switch to some questions

now.

Yesterday the whole world seemed to come under attack from a

major computer virus which paralyzed computers. Were census

2000 operations affected in any way? I got some on my e-mail, ‘‘I

love you’’ stuff. It was on the national news. I am just curious if

it had any impact on the Census Bureau.

Mr. PREWITT. No. We did a lot of work on our computers in headquarters. Somehow we put down a message through all of our computers, an anti-virus protection, and there may have been isolated

instances where isolated computers had read that message, but

there is certainly nothing of a large scale to report at all.

Mr. MILLER. It has been reported that organizations around the

country have had some real problems.

As you know, we have discussed the Tampa office before and you

responded in a letter to me this week. I visited my local office in

Bradenton, and Mrs. Maloney talked about an article in Boston,

there was an article in my local Bradenton newspaper talking

about a census worker working on the census in 1950, and it was

an interesting human interest story. I had one woman who worked

on the 1940 census and it was different back then. They didn’t use

the mail response certainly in 1940. When did mail come in, 1960?

Mr. PREWITT. 1960 was the first partial mail back.

Mr. MILLER. But in 1950, they were knocking door to door for everyone. It is more anecdotal, but I think my local office in Bradenton is doing a good job. They have some difficult areas to count,

too. In Tampa apparently they are having problems. Do you rate

local census offices? Is there some type of rating scale to identify

those problem ones, an A, B, C, D, F type of scale? I don’t want

to say that Tampa is in that low category, but if in a local area

you have a problem that is real?

How many local census offices would you consider being problem

offices in however you want to define a census problem office?

Mr. PREWITT. Fair enough. And I should say quickly what is a

problem local office varies from operation to operation. Indeed, in

the Bradenton-Tampa area, the mail back response rate was quite

strong and yet in other areas we had lower rates than we had

hoped. We had an LCO which wasn’t doing as well as we hoped in

update/leave. So it is not like a single office through all operations

is particularly weak. In the Tampa office, as I have written to you,

we believe we had a serious management problem. When you have

a serious management problem exactly at the recruitment period,

that accumulates.

I would say across the country well under 5 percent had the combination of those two things a management problem plus a recruitment problem. The only thing you could do at that point is try to

change the management quickly. When we changed the Tampa

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management, our rate shot up. We feel very good about the quality

of the staff. I think the press coverage in Tampa has been reasonably consistently negative. We believe that we know why that is so.

We do not think it is about our operations, it is about some other

things. We remain disappointed that the person who has gone to

the press so often, who was an employee, and then had to be let

go, has not signed the release so we can’t explain why he was let

go and that puts us at a disadvantage in this press battle.

To your more general question, we look at these data of course

every day, our recruitment data, and right now we have about 16

offices, that is as of a day and a half ago, 16 offices which we are

particularly concentrating on with respect to our recruitment system.

That 16 by tomorrow could be down to 8 because what happens

in some of these cases is that your payroll system is catching up

with you. Our data base is primarily our payroll system. We have

two offices where we had the very happy occurrence of a large

number of people shifted from update/leave and other kinds of operations to enumerators. We were still paying them on the old payroll, so it looked like we didn’t have anyone there, but we were

fully staffed. It took 2 or 3 days to move those records onto our

NRFU payroll system. I would say that the total number of offices

right now about which we have any serious concern are in the

handful.

Now, tomorrow it may be a different set because we may have

a higher attrition rate than we expected. At any time the probability of there being somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15

offices is high.

Mr. MILLER. Is recruitment the main way you tell?

Mr. PREWITT. How many people showed up at the training, etc.

Next week it will be attrition rates. If we have higher than expected attrition rates, that will be the thing then.

Mr. MILLER. You made this comment in your opening statement

but I think it would be nice if you elaborated. You are hiring more

people than you need, and some people are not going to get called

even though they may be qualified people. With an operation of

this size, communications is not always as ideal as you would like

it to be. So it is not always possible to let people know why they

are not getting called, could you just elaborate on that?

Mr. PREWITT. Certainly. It has been an issue throughout this entire process.

Mr. MILLER. And Members of Congress are going to get these

calls at their offices, too.

Mr. PREWITT. Going back to your opening comment about expecting us to use every tool in our tool box to make sure that we have

the highest level of accuracy possible, means for us, we do not want

to take any chance of diminishing the recruitment pool until we are

certain we don’t need someone. The recruitment pool has to be targeted at bilingual people and people with a cultural understanding

and people who understand complicated situations in different

parts of the country. We have to find the right number of people

and we are talking about mail back response rate, and we may be

at an LCO where we are going to have to use all six callbacks and

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others where we may get people more quickly because it has a high

retirement rate, etc.

From our point of view, the most important thing is to retain

that recruitment pool until we know we don’t need it. We are not

calling people and saying we don’t think that we are going to need

you. Even after nonresponse followup, we have a very large operation called coverage improvement followup, we need a very large

field staff to do that task. We are not sure where that task is going

to fall. That is our national estimate, but that will be concentrated

in certain areas. We want a recruitment pool there.

So all we can do—we would rather suffer the burden of some

people who are disappointed that they were not hired than not

have enough people to finish the census and that is simply the position we have to take.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, in your opening statement you made reference to

a fax which Representative Coburn provided to the press, an illegal

act if the Privacy Act applied to Members of Congress, I might add.

Dr. Prewitt, to try and put this incident in perspective, the information inadvertently faxed to the wrong number was not, as I understand it, title 13 material, was it?

Mr. PREWITT. That is correct. We fax no title 13 material.

Mrs. MALONEY. What exactly is title 13 material?

Mr. PREWITT. Material which has a census response, including an

address. All of that material is simply handled differently.

Mrs. MALONEY. How is it handled differently?

Mr. PREWITT. It is only handled by people who are sworn fully.

No one can have any access to any sort of confidential title 13 material that has not been sworn as a census employee.

When the actual forms come in, they are recorded in our local office by sworn people. They are boxed, put into the highly secure

Fed Ex system and they come to our data capture centers, and they

are opened by sworn employees in our data capture centers.

Mrs. MALONEY. Do you have any idea how many faxes the Bureau sends out in 1 day from its 520 local offices, 12 regional offices, 4 data capture centers and headquarter offices by the 500,000

people currently on the payroll? Do you have any sense of the proportion?

Mr. PREWITT. It is a very large number. A very large number.

We regret any human error. Human error does occur. In this

particular instance the woman who made the call immediately recognized that she had misdialed and tried to immediately track the

misdial. When we actually were able to reach the woman, we asked

that this material be destroyed immediately, and that was refused

by the woman who received it. Instead she chose to share it. We

then called the Congressman’s office, asked him to destroy the material immediately, and he also suggested that he was not going to

do that.

We are regretful that this piece of information got out. Look, I

am not trying to defend human error but I am very pleased insofar

as errors have occurred—and they will continue to occur—thus far

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there has been no title 13 information which has at all moved into

any kind of public setting.

Mrs. MALONEY. The Bureau has now had some limited experience with the nonresponse followup. Do you have any reports of

hostility, of slammed doors and is any—what is the response like?

Is it more hostile than 1990? Have you had any sense of a comparison or is it more friendly? What is the response?

Mr. PREWITT. We are very pleased with the successful launch of

nonresponse followup. That is the training programs all occurred

on schedule and were fully staffed. Everyone—the number of people that we needed came to our training sessions.

And we are now in the field. We only have 3 days of information,

of course, but approximately 8 percent of our non-response followup

workload is already completed in the field. Now, that still has to

be checked in and so forth. But from the field point of view, they’ve

now finished slightly over 8 percent of the cases. That’s as of last

night. We’re right on schedule with respect to that. We’re certainly

getting reports of concerns, slammed doors and so forth. It’s very

anecdotal.

I have no way of knowing whether it’s larger or smaller than we

got in 1990. The little factoid I learned yesterday is we’ve had 212

dog bites so far, and one sort of serious bee sting. But I don’t have

the base of that for 1990, whether that’s a higher rate of dog bites

than 1990 or not. But we worry about those kinds of things.

We do know in Anchorage, at least I read in the Anchorage

press, insofar as we can trust the press on these kinds of things,

at least four different enumerators in our update/leave operation

were met by people carrying guns and asked them not to come on

the property, so they left. But again, that’s anecdotal. I don’t have

a 1990 base to know whether this is higher or lower than 1990.

Mrs. MALONEY. Of the 41 million households in the non-responsive followup of the universe, how many of them are long forms

and how many of them are short, do you know?

Mr. PREWITT. I would have to do the arithmetic quickly. It should

have been, of course, one out of six exactly, but since the long form

differential is 10 percent, if somebody could quickly do that arithmetic for me. The point is—obviously the point is that there are a

higher percentage of long form cases than we had anticipated.

Mrs. MALONEY. The same proportion. You stated in your testimony on page 2 that you’re concerned about potential loss of data

due to opposition to the long form, and you stated further in your

testimony that you have no information on item by item non-response, but do you have a sense of which questions would cause the

most problem if they weren’t answered?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, the most important information we have,

Congresswoman Maloney, is the 1990 item non-response pattern.

We think that’s reasonably predictive of what we might get in

2000, and item non-response in 1990 varied from as little as 11⁄2

percent to—on the income question, I believe the key income question was 14 percent, but I don’t have that in front of me. I don’t

want to give you the wrong number. So it will vary a lot.

We think that should be the most predictive. As I’ve said in Congressman Rogers’ hearing, that’s what we’ll be examining. I don’t—

for this kind of work I don’t believe—I don’t disbelieve in survey

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data, but I don’t want to rely on survey data. If you actually look

at the InterSurvey question, when they asked the respondents

which questions do they find to be intrusive, they found a very high

percentage of people saying, I think, for example, 22 percent said

that they thought the race question was intrusive. On the other

hand, in 1990, only 2 percent of the American public did not answer the race question. So I simply don’t think that the surveys are

likely to be predictive of item non-response. What is most predictive is the 1990 pattern.

Mrs. MALONEY. Regarding the difference in response rates for

the long and short forms from the 1990 census and the 1988 and

the 1998 dress rehearsals, could you explain and expand on what

those response rates were?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. In the 1990 dress rehearsal, the response

rate—the differential response rate across a couple of sites averaged about 6 percent and the non-response—the differential in

1990 was 6 percent. In 2000, the differential response rate between

the long and short form was quite a bit higher. It varied between

whether it was update/leave in Columbia, SC, and so forth. But it’s

not inaccurate to say that it would have been close to 12 percent,

and of course, 12 percent is the non-response—is the differential in

the 2000 pattern thus far.

Mrs. MALONEY. What’s your analysis of the roughly 12-point differential in the long and short form response rates, and what impact did it have on your planning for the 2000 census?

Mr. PREWITT. I’m sorry, Congresswoman Maloney. Would you repeat that.

Mrs. MALONEY. There was a differential of roughly 12 percentage

points between the long and short form response rates in the 1998

dress rehearsal, and what impact did that have, if any, on your

planning for the 2000 census?

Mr. PREWITT. We did not treat the differential in the dress rehearsal as predictive of what we would get in 2000. So we did not

focus on that differential as a likely clue as to what would happen

in the census environment. We simply—we used the dress rehearsal, of course, to test operations, not to try to predict the behavior of the entire American public because these are only three

sites.

Mrs. MALONEY. It was basically an operational run-through.

Mr. PREWITT. And we changed some operations, including, of

course, the second mailing based upon our dress rehearsal experience. I might say, if I could, the approximate non-response followup

workload was 33 million short-form and 9 million long-form respondents.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. MILLER. On the long form, one thing I congratulate the Bureau for doing—I think it was actually before both of us arrived on

the scene—specifically was seeking professional expertise to help

design the form, and in reflecting back on the 1990 form compared

to this, I commend the Bureau for getting professional surveyor

consultants in helping do that. I think that’s positive.

Let me ask a question about the long form. The Bureau is using

one out of six for the long form. What criteria was used for that?

Why were you using one out of six? What is the purpose of that?

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Mr. PREWITT. Well, the real question is at what level of geography do you want to be able to provide reasonably reliable estimates? By doing one out of six, we can take our statistical estimates down to a population of less than 20,000. So a community

of less than 20,000 or any other kind of group of less than 20,000,

that is, how many disabled veterans there are, if that population

is as large as 20,000, we would be able to give you, the country,

a reliable estimate of its characteristics. At a higher sample, if we

did one out of two across the country, we could drive that 20,000

down to 12,000 or—I better get my experts to tell me exactly

where. But that’s the reason. We thought that was a prudent way

to help the country understand the social dynamics, the housing

characteristics, population characteristics, and so forth.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. This was, I guess, before both of us were actively

involved in this. Let me bring up the issue of Representative

Coburn. I know it was an accident, and everybody regrets accidents, but my understanding, by the way—is that the information

was not given to the press. For title 13 data, I’m glad we have

those standards, but I guess there’s a different standard for privacy

data, which is individual Social Security numbers and things like

that, for which you don’t have the same level of security concerns

for.

Mr. PREWITT. We have a very high level of security concerns, Mr.

Chairman, for all of our data. We simply have different ways of

processing non-title 13 and title 13 data. We do use—you cannot,

as I think Congresswoman Maloney’s questions implied, you cannot

manage a census without using e-mail, without using faxes, without using various forms of distributing information around to the

different actors who need it. And therefore, to say that we would

never use the fax system or an e-mail system or administrative

records would cripple the census enormously.

So we do handle certain kinds of things differently from how we

handle title 13 data. We have an enormously high standard for how

we handle title 13 data. That doesn’t mean we don’t have privacy

concerns and security concerns for other privacy data. Indeed, I’m

sure that’s true in the U.S. Congress as well. But at a certain

point, you do have to use the apparatus that’s available in the society for communication, and faxes happen to be one of them, and

faxes are subjected to the human error of misdialing a number.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask a question about quality control issues.

We had one computer error where the prenotification letters had

the extra digit. We had the surname issue problem for certain residential area units. We have confidence that the quality control efforts are doing the right job, and especially as we go into this nonresponse followup. Would you discuss quality control issues and

specifically quality control for the enumerators? How do we know,

for example, that an enumerator who is assigned to go out and call

on these 20 houses doesn’t go home and fill out 20 forms and bring

them back to you?

I think we need to have assurances as there has been in the past

that there are quality control checks, and because we’ve had some

quality control failures, we are going to hopefully avoid these in the

future.

Mr. PREWITT. These are quite separate kinds of quality control

procedures of course, quality control on our software. I would like

to put in context the digit error that has been discussed so much,

and we, of course, brought that to your attention immediately. We

have now produced operations that rest on about 2,500 different

software programs, and I can’t promise you that there won’t be

other errors, but I can tell you that all of the operations to date

using about 2,500 different software programs are now completed

and on schedule, on budget, and correctly.

And if, in that huge amount, we did have a digit problem with

respect to a contractor, it happened, we tried to explain how that

happened and so forth. And then the second one that I brought to

your attention with respect to the surname which has a very, very

tiny operational implication, but nevertheless I wanted you to

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know about that, you do have to see that as 1 out of 2,500, and

the fact that all the rest of them have functioned as we had hoped

for them is, to us, a very good sign.

Now, the second issue that you raised, the issue of quality control assurances with respect to enumerator work, certainly the

Census Bureau has been preoccupied throughout its history with

fabricated responses by enumerators. So we put in place quality

checks, and the work of every enumerator is double-checked, that

is, we either send someone back out or we use a phone system to

go back into the field and check on a proportion of every enumerator’s work on a regular basis. And if we find any enumerators have

reported to us a case, we go back out and find out that that was

a fraudulently provided case. All of that enumerator’s work is

redone, all of it and, of course, that enumerator is fired immediately. If you want the actual rate at which we do that checking,

Marvin Raines can explain that better than I can. Would you like

to hear that?

Mr. MILLER. Yes.

Mr. PREWITT. It’s 5 percent of the workload of every enumerator.

How frequently are we doing that on a consistant basis? Every

workload that comes in from an enumerator, 5 percent is pulled out

as a sample and we go back and do a quality check. So that is happening every day.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask a question about Social Security numbers and clarify what the Bureau’s position is because we also want

to caution people that there are going to be people out there that

are going to fake being census takers. But one of the questions you

are not asking——

Mr. PREWITT. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify that, Mr.

Chairman, because there are scam artists out there who are trying

to get Social Security numbers, bank card numbers, all kinds of

numbers calling themselves census employees.

Mr. MILLER. Once again, by the way, describe what identification

a Census Bureau employee would have, so when they are out there,

they know they are not getting a scam artist.

Mr. PREWITT. Let’s do that first and then talk about Social Security. Every enumerator, of course, has a badge. Every enumerator

is also carrying what we call a tote bag which has the logo on it,

and here is the badge. And every enumerator also has his or her

address file book, which is an 81⁄2 by 11, 14—it’s bigger than that.

Sorry. It’s not the kind of thing that would be easy to fabricate and

it has their work materials.

Most importantly, every enumerator is expected to have immediately available the phone number of the local office, so a respondent can say, when you knock on the door, you say you’re from the

Census Bureau. I don’t know if you are from the Census Bureau.

You say, look, here’s the phone number. Go call the local office.

Here is my name, here is my ID. And you can double-check. Then

you can go and check.

Most importantly, no enumerator should ever ask to come into

the home. Most people who are scamming, especially people who

are trying to conduct an act of thievery, need to get into the home.

And therefore if anyone asks to come into the home, we’re telling

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the American public that is an alert to you that that is not a census taker. That doesn’t mean you can’t invite them in.

Of course, enumerators get invited in and get served tea and

cookies. That’s all very nice. Sometimes it doesn’t happen that way,

but it does happen on some occasions. But nevertheless, no one

should ever ask to go into the home. That’s extremely important.

Now, there will, nevertheless, be scam artists out there trying to

get information from a household of a sort that could be used

against them.

With respect to the Social Security issue during the mailout

phase approximately 21,000 households got a special letter from

me—four different versions of that letter, saying that this is the

census, and for various complicated reasons, we’re going to be asking your Social Security number, and there are four different treatments in that 21,000, depending upon the experimental design.

And we made it quite clear this was voluntary. This was not mandatory.

This was not part of the usual decennial census procedures itself,

but we were asking that question as a test for a limited number

of households. The reason we did that experiment in the context of

the census environment is because we were under strong injunction

from the U.S. Congress, and indeed, you referenced it again in your

opening comments, to investigate to what extent we could use administrative records more efficiently than we’re doing in 2000. The

Census Monitoring Board had a full hearing on administrative

records. Part of the administrative record system of this country,

of course, is Social Security numbers.

So we were doing that as a way to test the privacy concerns, and

we’ll report, of course, our evaluation of that experiment as soon

as that’s been completed. That won’t be until sometime next year.

So in those cases, we actually ask in the census environment for

a Social Security number for roughly 21,000 households making

reference to the fact that, in addition, we actually ask for the Social

Security number in our Survey of Income and Program Participation, our SIPP survey, and that’s in order to actually strengthen

the survey instrument, and because we are under title 13, we are

allowed to cooperate with other agencies and strengthen the data

base by sharing reports.

Mr. MILLER. What’s the sample size of that?

Mr. PREWITT. Sample size of SIPP is 36,000 households.

Mr. MILLER. Correct me if I’m wrong. None of the non-response

enumerators will ask Social Security numbers?

Mr. PREWITT. That’s the key part of your question. During nonresponse followup, no enumerator has any reason ever to ask for

a Social Security number, because the experimental work we did

was only in terms of mail-back response rates. It was never intended to be part of nonresponse followups. You’re correct. No enumerator has any reason to ever ask for a Social Security number

of anyone in the society.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask one final question. It’s hard to enumerate areas. Does each local census office have a written plan for

dealing with the hard-to-count neighborhoods? Everyone is different. You were talking about Mrs. Maloney’s district is one of the

hardest to count. My hard-to-count areas are the migrant areas

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more in the center part of the State, actually even outside of my

congressional district. Do local offices have specific plans to address

their specific problems?

Mr. PREWITT. You’re quite right that a hard-to-count gated community can be just as hard to count as a migrant worker community. And, yes, sir, every LCO does have its hard-to-count strategy.

This is part of the record because we put this material as an appendix into my written testimony, and it does indeed take into account those kinds of things, languages spoken, distance the enumerator has to travel, is it very remote, things like gated communities.

Mr. MILLER. Each office would have a little different plan.

Mr. PREWITT. Exactly. There’s a whole list of the traits, but they

weigh very differently office to office. It’s not a cookie cutter operation.

Mr. MILLER. With regards to oversight, we can have access to it

when we visit a local office to see what—— Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir.

Mr. MILLER. One comment on the hard-to-count. Would you comment, on what’s happening on Indian reservations in particular?

Mr. PREWITT. Let me start, if I can, with remote Alaska because

the number is clearest in my mind because I just talked to the people up there who completed that. We are now completed with remote Alaska, and every village in which the local leadership, which

is a vast majority of them, cooperated with the census. We completed 100 percent of the count. We’re very pleased with that work

thus far. That’s a part of our American Indian and Native Alaskan

populations.

I think with respect to Indian land more generally, overall, the

pattern has been very strong, very positive. There are two or three

pockets, and I will have to ask Marvin Raines to comment in detail. Two or three pockets where we are still getting some resistance. I think there is one in Montana, as I recall. This is not a general problem. Indeed, the mail-back response rate from some of the

Indian areas beat their ‘‘plus 5’’ goal. About as many of those as

did across the country. 17 percent of communities across the country met the ‘‘plus 5’’ goals. It’s an extraordinary accomplishment by

those communities.

Does anyone know offhand the proportion of those who are in

areas?

Mr. MILLER. Let us just get that information.

Mr. PREWITT. We’ll give it to you.

Mr. MILLER. The American Indians were one of the most undercounted populations we had in the 1990 census.

Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. On administrative records, Dr.

Prewitt, can you use administrative records without Social Security

numbers, or do you need Social Security numbers?

Mr. PREWITT. In principle, there certainly are Social Security

numbers—excuse me—there are administrative records; for example, school attendance records, perhaps occupancy records from the

local government, which would not necessarily require you to use

a Social Security number. That would be very uneven across the

country.

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When we looked at administrative records, one of the things that

we found was it is very difficult to implement anything that was

standard across the country because different jurisdictions do not

keep the same kind of records. Our school attendance records, our

housing occupancy records, our housing start records, all kinds of

other records are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so it’s

very difficult to design a census in a way that standardizes quality

across the United States. The only things which are standardized

across the United States are largely Federal programs such as

Medicare, Medicaid and those programs all do use—I think all of

them use Social Security numbers as part of their data record.

I might say, if I could say another word or two on this, Mr.

Chairman, you asked what was the Census Bureau’s position on

Social Security numbers. We have no position. Indeed given the

concerns about privacy in this country, we have never recommended, and I don’t think we would ever recommend, that this

country have a national identification number system. The census

is done in Scandinavian countries, for example, based on a national

identification number system. My own judgment would be that that

would not be a direction that either the U.S. Congress or the Census Bureau should move toward.

Now, there’s a very complicated issue, because if we don’t have

a national identification system and yet we’re under pressure to

use administrative records in order to keep costs down and improve

coverage, what is the nature of the administrative records that we

can use which stop short of what the American public could interpret as a national identification number, which is to say, a Social

Security number? So it’s a very tough question that the Congress

will have to discuss as we start planning for 2010.

We did think we had an obligation to the Congress to sort of try

to learn what we could in the census environment. It’s very difficult to learn some of these things outside of the census environment. That’s why we conducted the experiment. It’s not a policy position of the Bureau to recommend that we use administrative

records in the way that would necessarily incorporate Social Security numbers as part of it.

Mrs. MALONEY. The chairman has repeatedly mentioned that he

would like to see administrative records used more but that really

basically raises a privacy concern because part of administrative

records, the reliable ones, Medicare, Medicaid which you mentioned

nationally, all involve a Social Security number which is a privacy

concern. So there is a privacy concern directly related to administrative records. Is that what you’re saying?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. Certainly at the national level there would be.

Mrs. MALONEY. I’m glad that Chairman Miller clarified that Congressman Coburn did not give census information to the press, but

based on his strong statements on privacy, it would be important,

I think, to have the same privacy level for Members of Congress,

as other agencies, such as the Census Bureau, and I think something that we could work on in a bipartisan way is a bill that

would cover Congress under the Privacy Act and have that go

through Congress so that Congress people were held to the same

privacy standard, because privacy is very important. That could be

something we could work on. I would certainly support it.

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All I can say, Dr. Prewitt, is congratulations. I’d like to publicly

thank you and all of the professionals and part-time workers, fulltime workers in the Census Bureau. You have reversed three decades of decline, and I have no further questions at this point. I just

congratulate you and wish you well during this difficult enumeration stage and just really hope that everyone will cooperate with

the enumerators and help us get the most accurate count in America. Thank you very much.

Mr. MILLER. In conclusion, let me say thank you. It’s satisfying

at this stage because of the mail response, which, as you know, is

one of the most difficult parts of it. Things are looking good. I’ll be

looking forward to progress reports as we go through this process.

We’ll have little bumps along the way, we all know. You’re going

to have an employee that’s not going to be one that’s going to live

up to the standards of the Bureau, and that’s going to be an embarrassment, but we need to prepare for that too.

On behalf of the subcommittee, thank you for the job you’re

doing and thank you for being here today.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ written opening statements be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered. In case there are additional questions that Members may have for our witnesses, I ask unanimous consent that the

record remain open for 2 weeks for Members to submit questions

for the record and that the witnesses submit written answers as

soon as practicable. Without objection. So ordered. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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