U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

70–056 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: MAIL-BACK RESPONSE RATES AND STATUS OF KEY OPERATIONS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 5, 2000

Serial No. 106–186

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

LISA SMITH ARAFUNE, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS

DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

——— ———

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JANE COBB, Staff Director

LARA CHAMBERLAIN, Professional Staff Member

AMY ALTHOFF, Professional Staff Member

ANDREW KAVALIUNAS, Clerk

CEDRIC HENDRICKS, Minority Professional Staff Member

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C O N T E N T S

Page

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

Statement of:

Mihm, J. Christopher, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management

and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied

by Robert N. Goldenkoff and Mark Bird, U.S. General Accounting

Office .............................................................................................................. 58

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census, accompanied

by John Thompson, Marvin Raines, and Bill Barron, U.S. Bureau of

the Census ..................................................................................................... 28

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

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

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 10

Mihm, J. Christopher, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management

and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office:

Letter dated June 7, 2000 ........................................................................ 81

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 61

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

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

Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 33

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OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: MAIL-BACK

RESPONSE RATES AND STATUS OF KEY OPERATIONS

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

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

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

of the subcommittee) presiding.

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

Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Chip Walker, communications director; Lara Chamberlain and Amy Althoff, professional

staff members; Andrew Kavaliunas, clerk; Michelle Ash, minority

counsel; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa and Earley Green, minority

assistant clerks.

Mr. MILLER. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, the subcommittee will come to order. There will be a vote in a short period

of time, but at least we can get started with our opening statements.

Today we continue our series of oversight hearings into the 2000

census. Coming before the subcommittee today will be Dr. Kenneth

Prewitt, Director of the Bureau of the Census, and Christopher

Mihm, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office.

Before I go further, I would like to say to everyone listening or

watching this hearing that if you haven’t mailed in your census

form, long or short, please take the time to fill it out and mail it

back. The census can’t be a success without your participation. The

money needed to ensure that you have the roads, emergency services, day care, schools and other vital services are tied directly to

the responses you give on your census questionnaire.

If you don’t have a questionnaire or are concerned that you

might be missed, you can call the Census Bureau’s telephone questionnaire assistance line for help. That number is 1–800–471–9424.

Let me repeat that, 1–800–471–9424.

If you have already mailed in your form, thank you for doing

your part to ensure that America is accurately counted.

I’ve read Director Prewitt’s testimony, and I must say that I am

very impressed by the complexity of the current ongoing operVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:31 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\70056.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ations. For example, the Bureau deserves praise for the mail response Web site now available at www.census.gov. The ability for

virtually any city or county to look and see their response rates

daily, what it was in 1990, and how it compares to the national average is an important addition to this census.

Today, there are a number of different issues that I would like

to address: The ongoing recruiting efforts as we approach the most

difficult stage of the full enumeration, the nonresponse followup,

which will be the most demanding task facing the Bureau in the

full enumeration; the current mail response rate, on which the success of the census hangs; and then the ongoing controversy regarding the long form questionnaire.

Clearly the biggest controversy surrounding the census has been

the perceived intrusiveness and the invasion of privacy of the long

form. In 1998, the Census Bureau distributed this binder with the

long form questions and explanations to all Members of Congress

and the Senate and asked for comments. Few comments were received. Clearly, Members did not know at that time what the level

of dissatisfaction would be just a mere 2 years later.

However, from the moment census forms were being received, it

was clear that this was the No. 1 complaint received by the subcommittee. While the long form has always been less popular than

the short form, the attitudes toward the 2000 long form seem to

be particularly intense despite the fact that it is the shortest ever

and only differs by one new question from 1990. During the 1998

dress rehearsals, the long form response rate was between 10 and

15 percentage points lower than the short form. However, this information was not provided to the Congress until June 1999, after

the questionnaire had been approved.

From the first day that the forms were being received at millions

of homes around the Nation, Members of Congress were receiving

phone calls from constituents who were very upset about the long

form. While some in Congress tried to downplay the extent of the

problem, it was clear to me that this would be the biggest issue

next to sampling that we would have to deal with in this census.

Every major newspaper in the Nation has written about the long

form and the privacy issue. Electronic media from talk radio to television have weighed in. It would be a mistake or a callous political

move to lay the blame for this controversy at the feet of Republicans. This Republican Congress has been nothing but committed

to the census. Republicans have said from the start that the Census Bureau would get the resources it needed to conduct a fair and

accurate census. Republicans have kept that promise. In fact, numerous Members have promoted the census in their districts in a

number of different ways, including Census in the Schools events

and public service announcements like the sample you will see

now.

[Videotape played.]

Mr. MILLER. The reason why there is a long form controversy is

because millions of Americans aren’t comfortable answering the

questions, and while some are quick to wag their political finger,

more thoughtful consideration on this topic will be more constructive. Long before remarks by any congressional leaders, news stories were talking about the long form problems. The News Hour on

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PBS had an entire segment on the privacy issue and the long form

almost 2 weeks ago. On 60 Minutes, one of the most popular news

shows on television with almost 13 million viewers weekly, commentator Andy Rooney voiced to the Nation two Sundays ago his

criticism of the long form. He concluded his commentary by saying,

‘‘I am not going to fill out the long form. I’ll send them about what

a soldier has to give if he’s captured in a war: my name, address

and Social Security number. Otherwise, Census Bureau, count me

out.’’

In my hometown in Bradenton, FL, my wife and I live next to

an elderly woman in her eighties. She has trouble with her eyesight, so my wife assisted her in filling out her census form. There

were several questions that she simply would not answer, including

giving her phone number. She noted to my wife that Florida was

a State that at one time sold its driver’s license list, and she simply

was not going to give her phone number to the Federal Government. And while we all know that the census operates in a confidential environment, I believe we must all realize that it is exceptionally difficult for government to separate its entities. A violation

of privacy on the State or local level, in people’s minds, translates

to all levels of government, including the Federal level. To the average person, government is government.

Another factor at work here is computer technology and the

Internet age. While both have brought tremendous convenience to

our lives, grown our economy and fundamentally changed the way

Americans live, they each have also brought new privacy concerns.

While our government reaps the benefits of our technological prosperity, government must also share the burden of new privacy concerns. I also believe, sadly, that some of the recent scandals involving this administration, particularly the misuse of the FBI files,

have not helped in building America’s trust in her government.

And while no single cause may be blamed, clearly there has been

a change in attitudes toward trust in government since the 1990

census. Unfortunately, the 2000 census is feeling some of the brunt

of this distrust.

So what does this all mean? What should people do who have

that long form sitting on their coffee table or kitchen counter? To

put it simply, fill it out and mail it in. Congress has heard the dissatisfaction with the long form loud and clear. However, to change

our approach in the middle of the census is impossible.

In the coming months, my committee will hold hearings on the

long form and privacy issues. All sides will have an opportunity to

come to the table and be heard. This includes privacy advocates

who believe the information is not needed and government data

users who say the information is indispensable.

I must say, however, that this Congress will look to eliminate the

long form for the 2010 census. Of course, we can’t eliminate the

long form in a vacuum. There is information that government

needs to make informed decisions on the allocation of resources and

the planning and distribution of $185 billion in funding. A new tool

called the American community survey is being developed by the

Census Bureau. Is that the answer? Maybe. This is going to take

careful consideration by this subcommittee and eventually the Congress as a whole.

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What is clear is that Republicans and Democrats must both work

to promote the census. If one side or the other attempts to gain political advantage over the other during these critical weeks, then

surely participation in the census will be hurt. An inaccurate census hurts America. An accurate census is in everyone’s best interest. This is your future. Don’t leave it blank.

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

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Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to our

witnesses, Dr. Prewitt from the Census Bureau and Mr. Mihm

from GAO. I’ve seen so much of you lately, it seems like we are becoming very old friends.

April 1, census day, was 4 days ago, and major census operations

are now under way. Though the most labor-intensive activities are

yet to come, all signs now are good. The largest peacetime mobilization in our history is under way, and I salute Director Prewitt

and the census staff for an excellent job to date.

Right now, the key success indicator for the census is the mailback response rate, how many households have mailed back their

forms. As of today, that stands at 55 percent, or about 67 million

households. That still leaves 45 percent of our Nation’s households

that have not returned their forms, and I urge everyone who has

not mailed their form back to do so today, right now.

At 55 percent, however, it seems that the estimated response

rate of 61 percent will be met, and I’m hopeful it might be exceeded. The Director has challenged the Nation to reach 70 percent,

and I hope and think we might reach that mark. I don’t want to

sound too optimistic, but the hard work on the advertising campaign, the partnerships, and promotional activities appears to be

paying off.

Other indicators are positive as well. Recruiting continues to go

well, with the Bureau reaching its goal of 2.4 million qualified applicants by March 31, almost 3 weeks ahead of schedule. 25.5 million forms have already been scanned with continued high accuracy.

Update/leave operations were successfully completed on schedule,

almost 6 million phone calls have gone to the 800 number, and

58,000 forms have been completed on the Internet.

The other night, I went out with Chairman Miller at 4 a.m. to

watch the temporary employees that the census has hired from the

community to count the homeless. It was incredibly impressive to

see the dedication and commitment of this work force operating in

the middle of the night in difficult and often hazardous areas. So,

things are going about as well as could be expected operationally.

Considering the doom and gloom of just a few months ago on

both the hiring needs and the mail response rate, things are, in

fact, going remarkably well. The two major concerns raised by the

GAO last December, hiring and response rates, are clearly on

track, which makes the recent comments about the long form by

senior Republicans all the more unfortunate.

Clearly one contingency that GAO could not warn us about are

some of the irresponsible remarks that have been in the news lately by elected officials who should know better. Let me make clear

I am not referring to the chairman of this subcommittee. He has

been a supporter of the census and the long form throughout this

latest turmoil. But several prominent Republicans, including Senator Lott, Governor Bush of Texas and J.C. Watts, Chair of the Republican Conference, have recently complained that the long form

is too nosy, that it asks too many questions. Some of these individuals have even made public statements suggesting that Americans

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should not complete their forms, despite the fact that refusing to

complete these forms would be a violation of Federal law.

I think these comments are outrageous, irresponsible, pandering

to fringe groups and the radio talk show circuit. They threaten the

success of the census by driving response down.

We have Members of Congress saying that they ‘‘believe in voluntarily cooperating’’ with the government, but beyond that they

won’t follow the law. Since when did following the law in this country become a voluntary thing? What is really disingenuous is the

fact that most of the questions on the long form have been around

for decades. In fact, Ronald Reagan signed off on every single question in the 2000 census during preparations for the 1990 census,

except for one required this decade by welfare reform.

Over 2 years ago, as the content of the long and short forms was

being finalized, every Member of Congress received this book, a detailed list of the questions to be asked, including a description of

the need for asking it, along with the specific legal requirements

supporting it.

So this controversy, at this late date, strikes some as intentional

sabotage. At the very least it is willful disregard for a successful

census. While it may not be intentional, it clearly shows an ignorance of how incredibly useful census data is, and how much of a

difference it makes in the lives of millions of Americans.

Let’s look at the plumbing question the talk radio shows seem to

focus on. Well, it may shock some, but there are places in this

country where Americans don’t have plumbing, in the Colonias in

Texas, on Indian reservations, and I daresay probably in rural communities in Mississippi.

Or let’s look at question 17 concerning a person’s physical, mental or emotional condition in the last 6 months. Are some Members

saying they don’t want to know how big a problem this is, how

many disabled Americans there are in this country, how many disabled vets, and where there are high concentrations of them who

need services?

It is my understanding that some of these leaders have started

to moderate their comments. Well, they shouldn’t just moderate

their comments, they should be in the forefront of urging all Americans to fill out their forms completely. They should be urging their

members to join them in supporting the census, all of the census.

Anything less is unacceptable. Unless they move quickly to fully

support the census, we run the risk of irreparable harm.

And frankly, I am not only worried about the problems presented

in response rates by this controversy. I’m also concerned about the

welfare of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who will be

going door to door in their neighborhoods in the coming weeks. So

today I am happy to hear things are going well. I sincerely hope

they will continue to go well, despite the impact of this controversy

over the long form.

I look forward to hearing from Dr. Prewitt today on how he

thinks this controversy will impact the census effort.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

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Mr. MILLER. I am sure that you are pleased to see the public

service announcement that Senator Lott and Representative

Thompson put together to encourage Mississippians to complete

their form.

Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn’t planning on doing

an opening statement, but given the controversy and discussion

over the long form, it is prudent to make some suggestions.

I am doing a PSA for the State of Wisconsin with my Democratic

colleague from Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, urging everyone to fill out

all of their census forms. I agree with you that, and as a person

who believes in limited government, I think it is very important

that you fill out the census forms.

You heard a lot about this on talk radio, and a lot of letters that

I am getting in my office are, ‘‘why do they want to know so much

about me?’’ A lot of the talk radio hosts—and I think it is a simplistic, but interesting way of looking at it—say, ‘‘if you want the government to do everything, then they need to know everything about

you.’’ That is the simple thing, and we are hearing that throughout

the country today. We are hearing it more in the year 2000 than

in 1990, I think, because there are more legitimate privacy concerns related to the technology that we have in this country today.

E-commerce, the Internet, these things I think are symptomatic

of the new technologies that are emerging in our economy and our

society that are cause for a rise in personal privacy concerns. So

I am not sure that this is all some kind of asperity against our government, but more a general concern about privacy rights that is

rising throughout the entire country.

These are basically the same questions that we had in 1990. It

is a different country now in the year 2000, but I hope we can get

through this and learn some lessons on the long form. Now that we

are in the information age, hopefully we can take some lessons

from this long form issue on a bipartisan basis and work forward

to make sure that the next census addresses these privacy concerns. I think it is important that everyone fills out every part of

the questionnaire.

I look forward to hearing your testimony.

In Wisconsin we had a 59 percent initial response rate, and we

are proud of that. The reports are showing that you are on your

way.

Mr. MILLER. You had to bring up that they beat Florida, didn’t

you?

Mr. RYAN. Yes, sorry.

Mr. MILLER. If you would stand, Dr. Prewitt, and the three senior staff members with you, Mr. John Thompson, Mr. Marvin

Raines, and Mr. Bill Barron, will also be sworn in case they are

needed to answer questions.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. MILLER. For the record, all four answered in the affirmative.

Director Prewitt, would you proceed with an opening statement.

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STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR, U.S. BUREAU

OF THE CENSUS, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN THOMPSON,

MARVIN RAINES, AND BILL BARRON, U.S. BUREAU OF THE

CENSUS

Mr. PREWITT. If I may preference my opening statement with a

statement of sympathy for the unhappy evening that you spent

Monday night.

Mr. MILLER. At least we made it into the finals.

Mrs. MALONEY. I thought you were talking about our homeless

count night.

Mr. MILLER. The Florida Gators.

Mr. PREWITT. Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney and members of

the committee, when I last testified, the focus was on whether the

Census Bureau could pull off the many complex and massive operations—all of these operations were conducted successfully with no

major problems that would put the census at risk.

In your letter of invitation, you ask for the status of nationwide

mail response rates and what those rates translate into for the

nonresponse followup [NRFU], workload, hiring and other operations, and associated costs. As of this writing, the national mail

response rate as posted on the Internet is 55 percent. In a few

hours, we will update it to 57 percent.

It does not reflect what we expect to be an April 1 effect. We are

not yet certain, but we are cautiously optimistic that we will

achieve the 61 percent on which we based our budgeting and staffing program. April 11 is the cutoff date for identifying housing

units that have not mailed back a questionnaire so we can include

them in the nonresponse followup workload. We will continue to

process mail returns after that date. On April 17, we will produce

a late mail return file that we will transmit to the Local Census

Offices so they can delete those addresses from their nonresponse

followup assignments.

You asked, sir, for an update on the status and a brief overview

of the census 2000 operational time line, and readiness for key activities and dates that lay ahead. On many of these issues, the

GAO will be testifying, and thus I will be very brief.

We began and completed the update/leave operation as planned.

Telephone questionnaire assistance centers also began on March

3 and will run through June 8, and outbound calling from the TQA

sites as part of our coverage edit program will continue into midJune. We have answered nearly 6 million calls. Just over 4 percent

of those calls were unable to get through; almost all of those were

on the first 2 days. There were also some early problems in validating the questionnaire data that was taken over the telephone.

These problems have now been resolved. The advance letter provided an opportunity for those who want a language form. We have

received about 2.5 million such requests.

In the mail out/mail back areas of the country there were some

households that received duplicate questionnaires. This occurred

because during all of the overlapping processes used to build the

master address file, we wanted to minimize the chance that we

would eliminate an address that should be retained. We have procedures in place to eventually remove these duplicate addresses

from our files before the final census data are tabulated.

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Enumerators are visiting about half a million housing units in

list/enumerate areas, an operation similar to that initiated in Alaska on January 19.

Last week, we completed the Service-Based Enumeration. Census enumerators interviewed people in shelters, at soup kitchens,

mobile food van stops and at targeted outdoor locations. We enumerated about 22,000 such places over the course of the 3 days.

We have initiated the transient night operation, which will extend until April 14 for a few very large and relatively stable locations. We have initiated, and will continue through May 6, the

count of about 7 million people in about 125,000 special places during group quarters enumeration—college and university dormitories, hospital and prison wards, migrant farm camps and nursing homes. We are on schedule with regard to the enumeration of

land-based and shipboard military personnel and people aboard

U.S. flag-bearing merchant vessels, about 1,000 ships and over 500

military reservations in all.

In your letter of invitation, you asked about the status of data

capture systems for all four sites. Data capture is working very

well. We have scanned about 24 million forms, and scanning accuracy is exceeding expectations.

We have received nearly 60,000 responses through the Internet.

Questionnaire Assistance Centers opened on March 8 and will be

open through April 14. To maximize use of staff, we have eliminated redundant sites and currently have 24,000 in operation.

Be Counted Forms became available on March 31 at approximately 19,000 sites in addition to the QACs, where they are also

available.

Your letter also asked about any difficulties confronting Local

Census Offices. None of the 520 LCOs is experiencing problems

that have prevented normal operations. Some LCOs are reporting

minor problems with their telephone systems, and headquarters

staff are working closely with the General Services Administration

and telecommunications service providers to resolve the problems.

At present, all systems are up and running.

Nonresponse followup [NRFU], is scheduled to begin April 27.

Enumerator training begins April 24, and NFRU will continue for

10 weeks until the first week of July. Extending NRFU beyond that

date would not only increase census costs, it could lead to a reduction in data quality. Experience teaches us that the longer we are

in the field, and the farther we get from census day, the more the

quality of respondents’ answers deteriorates. We will stay in the

field until we have exhausted all of our established procedures.

You asked about the status of the hiring process for NRFU.

While we have met our national goal of having 2.4 million qualified

applicants well in advance of our April 19 target date, we are continuing to accept applications and to actively recruit in local areas

where we have not yet met our recruiting goals.

I would now like to describe in some detail the enumerator’s job

and our procedures for assuring the quality and completeness of

their work. Each NRFU enumerator is assigned a specific area in

which to work, called an assignment area, and is given a binder of

addresses in that area that includes all those addresses for which

we have not received a completed questionnaire, and in rural areas

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enumerators also receive maps that have the housing units’ locations spotted on them.

If the current household lived at the address on census day, the

enumerator interviews a household member at least 15 years of

age and completes the assigned questionnaire. If the unit was occupied by a different household on census day, the enumerator completes a questionnaire for the occupants who lived there on census

day by interviewing a knowledgeable person, such as a neighbor.

If the current occupants were not enumerated elsewhere, the enumerator will also complete a census questionnaire for them at their

census day address. If the housing unit was vacant on census day,

the enumerator completes appropriate housing questions on the

questionnaire by interviewing a knowledgeable person, such as an

apartment house manager.

The enumerator must make up to six attempts to complete a

questionnaire. If no one is home at a housing unit, the enumerator

obtains as much information as possible about how to contact the

occupants. The enumerator leaves a notice at the address that they

have been visited and provides a telephone number so the occupant

can call back. He will make up to two additional personal visits,

three in all, and three telephone attempts at contacting the household before obtaining as much information as possible to complete

the questionnaire from a knowledgeable source.

Enumerators are instructed to make their callbacks on different

days and at different times of the day. They must obtain at least

the status, occupied or vacant, and the number of people living in

the unit. If an enumerator submits a questionnaire which contains

that minimal level of data, the crew leader must check the enumerator’s record of callbacks for the housing unit to determine that

procedures were properly followed. The crew leader also holds

these cases for possible further followup to obtain more complete

data.

In order to prevent falsification of the data by enumerators, a

percentage of each enumerator’s work is verified for accuracy by

staff. An enumerator who is discovered falsifying data is dismissed

immediately, and all the work must be redone by another enumerator.

Daily production levels begin to decrease during the end of

NRFU. Sometime enumerators complete the easiest cases first, finish the work closest to their homes first, or believe that the quicker

that they finish, the sooner they would be out of work. In order to

bring the NRFU to closure within schedule, we implement a procedure known as ‘‘final attempt.’’ Within the area covered by a crew

leader, approximately 2,200 cases, when that area has completed

95 percent of its workload, the crew leader consolidates the remaining work and gives it to the most productive and dependable enumerators. They make one final visit to each outstanding address

and do some of the housing units for which only minimal data was

collected to complete as much of the questionnaire as possible. This

procedure takes advantage of our best enumerators and will improve both the count and the data quality.

Final attempt must resolve all outstanding cases. NRFU is not

over until every procedure has been completed, and this, of course,

includes the check-in of every census form.

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Let me then turn quickly to the long form issue.

Mr. Chairman, I pledged to you and this subcommittee several

meetings ago that I would bring to your attention any development

which could put the census at risk. Nothing in our current operations poses such a risk, but the widespread attack on the long

form could have serious consequences. Indeed, I alerted you to this

in our phone conversation early last week. First a few background

comments.

Concern with overburdening respondents with too many questions led the Census Bureau to introduce a long form on a sample

basis in the 1940 census. We have used this approach in each decennial census since. The selection of a sample based on established scientific methods means that not everyone is asked every

question. The majority receive only the short form.

The census 2000 long form is the shortest in history. The law requires that 3 years prior to census day, the Census Bureau report

to Congress the subjects proposed for inclusion in the census. The

Census Bureau reported this information to Congress in a letter accompanying materials dated March 28, 1997. The law also requires

that we report to Congress the specific questions we intend to ask

2 years prior. We did that March 30, 1998. The materials that we

submitted to Congress described each question we included on the

long form and, more importantly, provided detailed legal citations

that indicate each item is mandated or required by congressional

legislation or Federal judicial decisions in the book that the ranking member and indeed you referenced as well.

Accurate census data provide the underpinnings for other Federal surveys and data collections. The decennial census forms a

sampling base for other national surveys and is used to compute

rates of various indicators. Therefore, it is directly linked to the

statistical system’s ability to provide current unemployment data,

to provide data for making cost-of-living adjustments, to calculate

numerous vital statistics and rates for health services, to calculate

crime and victimization rates and the like.

I now bring the subcommittee up to date regarding our concerns

about the fate of long form data in the current census environment.

Some of the information I now have available is so recent that I

could not include it in the written testimony submitted earlier this

week.

The current differential response rate between the short and long

form household is approximately double the 1990 rate. This differential may close, and we are doing everything we can to assure

the American people that long form data are important and confidential. Every 5 percent differential in the response rate between

the two forms translates into a 1 percent reduction in the overall

response rate. In other words, if a differential today were what it

was in 1990, the overall national response rate would be a percentage point higher.

If the lower than expected response to the long form persists,

there will be operational and budgetary implications. It takes more

time to enumerate a long form. A lower than expected response

rate will, consequently, place an unanticipated burden on the nonresponse followup phase of the census. Moreover, given the public

atmosphere that has trivialized and discredited the long form, we

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have to be concerned about the morale of the field staff who will

now be trying to get information that many public voices, including

a few Members of Congress, are saying should be voluntary. We

have to be prepared for higher than expected turnover, especially

in rural areas with the higher than average number of long forms.

Given the public commentary, there is also the possibility that

we will have a higher than expected item nonresponse on the long

form. This could have serious consequences for a decade. The Census Bureau has high quality standards. It would not release data

that it believed were insufficiently reliable to perform the functions

expected of them. This has never happened with census data, but

it has with certain survey information. If the two issues just mentioned—high nonresponse to the long form and high noncompliance

with particular items on the forms returned—combine to push data

below our quality threshold, the Census Bureau would be placed in

a very difficult position of deciding what to release.

Mr. Chairman, I know you are concerned about whether the ACE

will provide the quality of data required to adjust for the

undercount. At a public session organized by the National Academy

of Sciences, I said if the ACE effort did not meet Census Bureau

quality standards, it would not be used. This holds for all Census

Bureau efforts. If, for instance, the income data were to fall below

our quality threshold and we could not release it, more than two

dozen statutory uses ranging from the Energy Policy Act of 1992

to the Business and Industry Guarantee Loan Program of 1980 to

title I funds and Head Start programs would be affected. So also

would be the calculation of the Consumer Price Index and the unemployment rate for the next decade.

You, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member and Mr. Ryan and

Mr. Davis have made strong statements about the importance of

the long form data, but now I urge you to ask the entire U.S. Congress to step forward and explain to the American people why the

Congress has required, authorized and paid for the collection of

these long form data. There were no viable alternatives to having

a long form for census 2000. No other data source could provide all

the information that a Nation needs in a cost-effective manner. In

the long term, we hope that the American community survey will

replace the long form, and indeed by 2010. The ACS scheduled for

nationwide implementation in 2003 is one of the most important

improvements in Federal statistics, and it is the cornerstone of our

efforts to keep pace for timely and relevant data.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. We have two votes coming up, and so I think we

should be back in about 15 minutes. We stand in recess. I ask my

colleagues to come back as soon as we can, and we will proceed.

[Recess.]

Mr. MILLER. We will reconvene the subcommittee. Let me start

off with some questions on the long form.

What is the difference in response rates in 1990 between the long

form and short form, and also in the dress rehearsal?

Mr. PREWITT. The long form/short form differential in 1990 at the

end of the census was 4.5 percent, but at the end of mail out/mail

back, it was about 6 percent. The reason that converged slightly,

when we went out in the field, we were able to convert a higher

percentage of the long from nonrespondents than the short form

nonrespondents, so we closed the gap in 1990.

Your numbers that I just saw in your testimony on the dress rehearsal ranged from 10 to 15 percent.

Mr. MILLER. It was Sacramento, and I don’t think——

Mr. PREWITT. Sacramento and South Carolina. Sacramento was

14.7—12 percent, and South—that’s South Carolina.

I’m sorry, the reason that it is complicated, we calculated both

the mail out/mail back and update/leave area. So the update/leave

area was 13 percent. The mail out/mail back area was 11 percent

for South Carolina.

The differential in Sacramento for mail out/mail back was 15,

and in Menomenee was 8. That was all update/leave. Those are the

numbers.

Mr. MILLER. So the dress rehearsal gave us an indication of a

problem which we just found out about a year ago, and at that time

it was too late to respond to it as much. What steps did the Bureau

take?

Mr. PREWITT. I would say that there are certain things the dress

rehearsal gives you a clue on. As you know, the overall turnout response rate in dress rehearsal was low. It doesn’t predict everything. It is an opportunity for us to test operations. We don’t expect

the response patterns in a dress rehearsal to look like the overall

response rates. We would not ourselves have concluded that that

differential was very predictive.

We thought the strongest predictor of large-scale patterns is the

1990 pattern. Indeed, one of the most interesting things is that the

overall response rate in 1990 compared to 1980 tracks almost perfectly across the 50 States. It is just that everybody dropped 10

percent. It is not that some States dropped 20 and some States

didn’t drop at all; all dropped approximately 10 percent across the

country. That is the strongest predictor. We based much of our

operational predictions on the 1990 response rates for 2000.

There are so many things going on in a dress rehearsal. One,

they are not typical places of the entire country.

Mr. MILLER. There was a large differential. You don’t think that

was significant in both Sacramento or——

Mr. PREWITT. No, we didn’t conclude from that we were going to

get this kind of differential in 2000, but neither did the subcommittee or GAO. Nobody said, oh, my goodness, at that stage.

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Mr. MILLER. When you scan in the envelopes the bar code tells

you whether it is a long or short form. You don’t know whether the

person completed just the first six questions?

Mr. PREWITT. That’s correct. We will do serious work on item

nonresponse, but we won’t have serious data until during the winter of 2001.

Mr. MILLER. I was talking to a Member of Congress, and he had

the long form. He was still completing it. I got the long form, and

there are some questions my wife had to fill out because she knew

more details. The short form is—obviously anybody can go through

it in a couple of minutes and complete it. There could be a delay

a little bit, so we will have to see what it is.

Mr. PREWITT. We very much hope that there is a delay, and we

hope that people are sitting with the long form waiting and that

this converges.

If you do the arithmetic, there aren’t that many forms left out

there that we expect to get back in the mail. At a certain point you

begin to get a real tailing off. We are hoping that this weekend— we are doing a lot of heavy advertising. It is certainly possible, as

you suggest, Mr. Miller, that more long forms are sitting on those

kitchen counters, and we will get a disproportionate number of long

forms at the tail end. And we will be happy if that turns out to

be the case, but we will know that roughly a week from today.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Prewitt, I think the controversy of the long form that has

surfaced has been quite harmful to your efforts. What do you think

is the impact on the response rate because of these comments by

elected officials?

Mr. PREWITT. I honestly believe that it is very difficult for large

parts of the American public to draw the kind of fine distinctions

that are sometimes suggested in public commentary.

I appreciate that all responsible leaders are saying it is important to be counted; therefore, send your form in even if you don’t

fill it all out. But how that translates in the public consciousness,

especially since we are now dealing—we have all got to remember,

we are now dealing with the tail end of the mail-back response period. That is, the most alert and responsible and committed members of society have probably sent forms back in. So we are now

dealing with people who are less motivated or less attuned and

paying less attention. What they may hear vibrating in the atmosphere is, ‘‘oh, well, the information is not that important after all.’’

That is what has us worried.

Mrs. MALONEY. What are you doing to counter this unfortunate

attitude? Do you have any plans to specifically respond to the unfortunate comments of Senator Lott and Governor Bush?

Mr. PREWITT. I have done everything that I can in the media to

repeat that the long form questions are all there because the U.S.

Congress wants them; that they all perform these important functions, as you have all testified and said in your own PSAs; and that

all we can do is simply repeat that.

We are doing a lot of targeted advertising, video news feeds. I do

about 10 or 15 a day where we think that we might be able to get

a bit of visibility on this. We are accelerating our targeted radio advertising right now, but—it is very late in the game to try to use

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an advertising campaign to counter the mind-set or the public impression that has been generated by—and I think as the chairman

says quite correctly—a quite extensive attention to this issue

among talk shows and other public commentators. When I say that,

I certainly don’t mean at all to exclude any of the larger—the

newspaper editors and so forth are all part of that commentary.

All we can do at this stage is push hard in the last 3 or 4 or 5

days.

If I can say one other word, I think it is going to be extremely

important when the mail-out/mail-back period is finished, which is,

after all, less than a week, to regroup on this and try to get a message out, because the nonresponse followup period, we are going to

have a lot of temporary employees, they are Americans trying to

count America, and they are going to be out in the field knocking

on doors, and it is very important to have an atmosphere at the

time that this census matters, that this is serious business, and

that this is not trivial or incidental or voluntary.

So I am very much hopeful that we will be able to, with your

help, enlist the U.S. Congress on that behalf, and other members

of the U.S. Government, to say—we may have another 40 to 45

million households. So we have another shot at trying to make a

major message, but we will not be able to do that through an advertising campaign. We will have to do that with the kind of PSAs

you just saw, and I hope they will stress the importance of these

data and to cooperate with the enumerators.

Mrs. MALONEY. I must say that I have collected well over 30 editorials across the country really calling upon everyone to fill out

their forms, the long form, and not to listen to any elected official

who may be advocating otherwise or referring to the census long

form as optional.

It occurs to me that the problem may surface after the mail-back,

but in the nonresponse followup. It may be more of a problem

there. At what point do you send an enumerator out, once you have

the long form? Do all of the questions have to be answered? What

is the decision if they do just selectively answer; do you send out

an enumerator? What is the procedure in that case?

Mr. PREWITT. No, if we get a long form in that has any information whatsoever that allows us to consider it a legitimate response,

then we cannot send an enumerator out to try to get the additional

information. That is why I say item nonresponse is a very serious

issue, but we don’t have a good measure. It could be three questions left blank, or it could be 52 questions that were left blank.

We certainly have to have some information. For example, we

cannot take a form that says there are 99 people living here and

then nothing else. We can’t accept that form on behalf of the U.S.

Government. We would have to somehow find out if there were

really people living there.

So there are certain thresholds below which we cannot accept the

form, and you wouldn’t want us to. It would be an alert to us that

perhaps this is a fraudulent count. So we have to get enough information to know that somebody actually lives there, that this is a

residence, it is an inhabited residence, and enough information

about an individual to be able to say this is a person or else we

can’t put them in the count.

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We certainly don’t have the resources to go out and now convert

a lot of empty responses on the long form into full data. That is

not part of the census operational plan.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Ryan.

Mr. RYAN. Dr. Prewitt, you said that the nonresponse followup

for the long form is twice what it was for 1990 at this time?

Mr. PREWITT. At this time.

Mr. RYAN. Why do you think that is, aside from comments here

and there?

Mr. PREWITT. Look, I am trying to actually get some information

on this, and I can speculate the way that you can speculate. I think

you are right, Congressman Ryan, that this country has a heightened sense of privacy concerns, and that spills over into the government.

I can tell you based upon some survey data that the proportion

of the American public who was telling us that the census data are

invasive jumped by 7 percent from—from week 2 of the census to

week 3, and in between that period of time, that is when this campaign started. So I can only infer from that that it is having some

effect. Does that translate into nonresponse? I can’t tell you that

yet.

Mr. RYAN. I think it was a Houston judge that filed an injunction

against the imposition of a fine for those who may not fill out all

of their long form. What is your reaction to that? In 1990, did the

Census Bureau impose a $100 fine on people who didn’t fill every

bit of their long form questionnaire? What is your take on the injunction?

Mr. PREWITT. The last case that was enforced on noncompliance

with the census was in 1960. Mr. Rickenbacker. The fine was imposed. It was upheld by the courts.

The Census Bureau itself is not an enforcement agency and

would never enforce any of these. We are a statistical agency. But

it has not been our recommendation that enforcement action take

place. My own concern on that would be that that would create

more noise, more fuel, and I would worry that it would have a

damaging effect on the census.

By the way, the $100 which has been mentioned in the press,

and indeed we have mentioned it ourselves, I want to correct the

record, it turns out to be up to $5,000. The standard Criminal Act

of 1984 trumps all other acts. It is title 18, I believe, and unless

you explicitly exclude some Federal infraction from the law of title

18, the fine is actually up to $5,000.

Mr. RYAN. I thought it was $5,000 if a government employee misuses the census data or accesses it improperly.

Mr. PREWITT. That is a separate issue.

Mr. RYAN. So the fine is actually $5,000?

Mr. PREWITT. Up to.

Mr. RYAN. Up to $5,000.

Mr. PREWITT. This is the uniform criminal statute passed in 1984

that basically, as I understand it, says that any infraction of a Federal law can be—can elicit a fine up to $5,000. So the particular

injunction against the $100 is targeted on title 13 rather than title

18.

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Mr. RYAN. So the injunction really is meaningless. And an infraction subject to the $5,000 fine could be failure to fill out one or two

of the questions on the long form?

Mr. PREWITT. Yes.

Mr. RYAN. I don’t want to create some hysteria on talk radio on

this. Hopefully C–SPAN will play that. The Census Bureau—these

fines have not been imposed in the past?

Mr. PREWITT. Since 1960.

Mr. RYAN. They were not imposed in 1970, 1980 and 1990?

Mr. PREWITT. I think maybe there was one case in 1970. I am

almost certain in 1970 there was a case that was overturned. It

was overturned on the grounds that it was selective enforcement.

‘‘Why did you choose that person instead of that person when millions performed the infraction.’’ The only one that was upheld was

1960.

Mr. RYAN. So the last one was thrown out?

Mr. PREWITT. I believe so. But the Census Bureau is not interested in pursuing enforcement action.

Mr. RYAN. I understand that it is not in your best interest to

broadcast that, because then you encourage people not to fill these

out. Boy, that is an intriguing number.

As your enumerators are going out—and I know that you addressed this with Mrs. Maloney, but as they are going out and following up for the long form, as they ask questions on the followup

for the long form, is there a threshold in the questioning that is

acceptable and then not acceptable? Meaning if you find that people are not going to answer a question A, B or C, but they will answer all other questions, is there a threshold in the long form that

makes it acceptable census data or unacceptable census data? Has

that threshold been established?

Mr. PREWITT. There is certainly a minimal threshold. We have

to be able to be certain that the number of people we are counting

in this household on this block actually live in that household. That

is the threshold.

Mr. RYAN. So essentially the short form questions and——

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. If we got even a partial short form answer on

the long form, the person would still be counted. So we would have

huge item nonresponse, but we would not lose the count. And we

will do everything we can to get that count correct.

Mr. RYAN. Thank you.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Davis.

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

Dr. Prewitt, I know that there has been and continues to be a

tremendous amount of discussion about the long form and the response.

I do believe that people begin to feel that it was more invasive

as they heard other people suggest that it was invasive. I mean,

the power of suggestion is amazing still in this country. And I don’t

think people were concerned as much about whether or not it was

invasive until they began to hear public figures suggest that maybe

it was, or they saw some columnist suggest that maybe it was.

They pick it up and say, ‘‘yes, I guess it really is,’’ when they look

at it.

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Let me just ask you, let’s say that I am one of these individuals

who want to participate in the count, and I don’t have any real difficulty giving the basic information, but I, too, have been convinced,

if I was that person—and I received the long form, and I was not

convinced—I did half, and my wife did the other half, and then

there might have been a question or two and we threw up a coin

to decide which one of us would answer that one, and it was done.

A lot of fun.

But let’s say that I am not convinced that the information is necessary, and that I can participate without providing this information. Is there something that one might be able to suggest or convey to the average citizen that it is important to do the long form

if that is what they got?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, Congressman Davis, I think that the message is roughly the message that we have been trying to promote

now for 6 months, which is an awful lot of government programs,

provide benefits to your community, if you see those ads about

schools, and you see those ads about transportation, or you see

those ads about day care centers, if you make any kind of connection, you connect that to long form data, because all of the social

programs use the kind of data about age, about veteran status,

about poverty, about traffic congestion, about water pollution,

based on long form data to provide those services.

I would hope that when you are sitting there at the table and

saying, I know this is something that I don’t want to do, but I have

just heard that all of these benefits will come to my community,

you will make that sort of logical step.

But at this stage what we will have to do—because if we do have

a higher than expected nonresponse to the long form, we will now

have to try to get the enumerators—and this is not easy. You are

trying to train half a million temporary workers to enumerate people who are angry at you, indifferent, hostile toward you and get

that full information. We will have to rely on that army of people.

We will have to get them to understand the importance of this.

This will not recapture the data that has already come in, but is

incompletely filled out. There is no way to recapture that data at

this stage.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Are you saying that this is information

that can be used for planning purposes to help make specific determinations about what is needed in certain communities or what

might be needed overall for the country as a whole?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, yes, sir.

To put this as strongly as I can, I think the commentators thus

far are overlooking the fact that the Consumer Price Index, the unemployment rates are tracked with data that in turn are dependent

upon quality information that you get from the decennial, and we

are putting at risk the way that we conduct our basic economic statistics in this country. This is very serious stuff.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Would you also say that there is no better

way or no other time at which we could expect to get this information in such a massive way?

Mr. PREWITT. There certainly is no way in the year 2000. There

is no agency other than the Census Bureau that can collect this

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kind of information. We cannot suddenly decide let’s find somebody

else to collect long form data for the country.

The best we could offer the country, and it is not trivial, is that

if we were to—the chairman in his opening remarks said he does

not expect to be doing the long form data ever again, holding out

the possibility that we will be able to launch the American community survey. We are currently scheduled to launch that in 2003. We

could actually accelerate that by a year. We could start the American community survey a year earlier if the Congress instructed us.

If they told us to start planning to be in the field by 2002 with the

American community survey, I believe we could do that.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I know that Illinois’ initial response rate

is 56 percent, but I am told that my city is significantly lower than

that. Would you have any suggestions at this late date for those

places that are coming in below the national norm?

Mr. PREWITT. The most important figure to watch right now is

how far below your own performance in 1990 you are. In Chicago

you are about 13 percent below your 1990 performance. That is not

that far off from the national number. The national number is

about 10 percent. Even though you are well below the national average, the most important thing is to measure yourself against

1990.

So the most important message to get to the people of Chicago

is let’s accomplish what we accomplished in 1990. Worry about

what we were in 1990 and how we can get there. It is not too late

to send the form in. We are now doing video news feeds to Chicago

saying it is not too late, it is not too late. Mail it back now if you

still have it. I think the more we can get that message out over

the next 2 or 3 days, the better off the census will be.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you. I am so pleased I have a

bunch of volunteers who are also going out this weekend simply

knocking on doors and asking people to send their forms in.

Mr. PREWITT. Good, good, good.

Mr. MILLER. Director Prewitt, I have been urging people to complete all of the questions because we recognize how critical it is for

our area. Sarasota is undercounted, and it hurts; Chicago or New

York City. So it really is a personal thing that we need to do.

When Mr. Ryan was asking the question about why people are

not responding, you referred to some poll that said it is really because of some comments of Andy Rooney or politicians or all of the

talk show people. There are legitimate concerns about privacy that

are probably different today than 10 years ago, whether it is medical privacy—financial privacy is always a subject that we are concerned with, and we have legitimate concerns.

I mentioned in my opening statement a problem with the abuse

of driver’s license lists in Florida. They were selling photographs

even in Florida, so people are more suspect of government. So it

is not just these comments. There are differences in society.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I don’t want to back away from

that.

What I have said publicly and repeat strongly today, I think this

country is on a collision course between its insatiable desire for information and its heightened concern for privacy, and the Census

Bureau is caught between those two needs. As I said yesterday

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publicly to the press, we are creating a knowledge economy, and

the infrastructure for a knowledge economy is information. And the

decennial base helps create a higher quality information infrastructure for this society, and the society on the one hand wants that,

and on the other hand we have these deep concerns about privacy.

All I was suggesting by the poll data, and I don’t want to put

too much emphasis on poll data, but in a week—it wasn’t that it

wasn’t already there, it was, but it jumped in 1 week that the census data are invasive, and it happened to be the week that this became a public discussion. That is a fact. I don’t want to overinterpret it.

Mr. MILLER. I think if we polled it today compared to 10 years

ago, it would be higher. We are in an information technology era,

and it raises these concerns. After we get through these critical

phases, we are going to discuss how to handle the 2010 census.

If someone refuses to answer the income question, and you get

asked this question, what do you tell someone? You tell them basically—what do you tell someone who says, I am not going to put

down how much my electric bill is?

Mr. PREWITT. One on one with a respondent, I would say, look,

give us an estimate, create a range, give us the best information

that you are prepared to give us. Here are the kind of ways that

this information is used. As I just said, over two dozen pieces of

important Federal legislation use some—the income data one way

or the other. So the array of programs that use these data is enormous. But it is also used to drive the sample frame and the statistical controls for the CPI and unemployment data. All of our pension systems are indexed to the CPI. The Social Security is indexed

to the CPI. The stakes are very high. That is what I would try to

explain.

If they persisted in refusing, I would prefer to get their information, whatever I could get from them. The most important thing— and I don’t underestimate this—the most important thing is a good

count. Our constitutional obligation is to count the population for

purposes of apportionment and redistricting. We take that as our

foremost priority task; and the other benefits that come from the

long form are simply not as high a priority. So we will do everything we can to count everyone and make sure that we don’t count

anyone twice and that we have no fraudulent responses. That is

our first task.

Mr. MILLER. You are not an enforcement agency, as you said to

Mr. Ryan? You are not an enforcement agency?

Mr. PREWITT. We are not going to tell our enumerators to wave

fines in front of these people. We did put on the envelope that it

is required by law. We wanted to make sure that this does not look

like junk mail. We were worried that people might try to duplicate

the census mailing, as indeed we had one instance of, and indeed

that mailing must have worked because we got some checks made

out to that organization.

Mr. MILLER. What did you do?

Mr. PREWITT. We sent them back to the respondents. We didn’t

want to be in the banking business of handling money for Mr.

Glavin, as you might appreciate. We actually did get some responses to that mailing.

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But by putting the mandatory nature on the envelope, we were

certain that nobody could duplicate the envelope and try to piggyback on the census environment. The other reason is that we have

some research that suggests that slightly increases the response.

We wanted to use everything that we could to get the response rate

up.

Mr. MILLER. Did you get anyone that sent you a check and said,

I refuse?

Mr. PREWITT. Oh, yes. We have certified letters that come in with $100 saying, I am going to pay my fine.

Mr. MILLER. But the check has an address?

Mr. PREWITT. Listen, the number of things we get, you would be

surprised. The other day we opened up a form, there were seven

$100 bills in it, and obviously somebody made a mistake. They had

stuff on their desk that got put in. We found that person in less

than 24 hours and returned the money to them. I was very proud

of our organization.

Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. That is a good story to tell from your agency.

At our last hearing we had quite an extensive discussion on access by various agencies to the Census Bureau. I understand that

many of these issues have been worked out, but that there are ongoing conversations with the Monitoring Board.

I have also heard that there has been some confrontation between oversight personnel and Census Bureau personnel, and I understand there were some threatening comments.

Could you explain what happened and comment further on access, and in particular this particular incident?

Mr. PREWITT. No, I am pleased to report that we have been making some headway, and with the chairman’s permission and your

permission, the Deputy Director has taken a major leadership responsibility in working out the access questions, so if I can ask him

to respond to where we are on access issues.

Mrs. MALONEY. Go ahead.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Barron.

Mr. BARRON. Good afternoon.

Mrs. MALONEY. Good afternoon.

Mr. BARRON. Yes, we have spent a lot of time on access issues.

I think the major objective was to make sure that we were providing the access that all of the various oversight entities felt that

they needed in order to do their job. Right now I think we are at

140 visits, either conducted or scheduled now through the end of

April. I fully expect that number is going to grow some more. To

my knowledge, we are working well with all those who wish to look

at our activities. If there are any complaints, I hope that people

will get in touch with me right away.

With respect to the issue of threatening comments, I think we

did have reports of one incident in one LCO. I have discussed that

with the Monitoring Board staff. I think they agreed with me that

this was a situation that needed to be addressed, and, in fact have

now issued some guidelines on conduct which emphasize that in

the course of doing these visits, Federal employees and particularly

LCO staff need to be treated with courtesy and respect. I think

that is mentioned several times in those guidelines, and I would

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like to thank the congressional side of the Monitoring Board for

preparing that document and putting this issue to rest.

Just in conclusion, I think given the tone of some of the comments made at the last hearing, I think this was the reason the

Census Bureau had our guidelines in the first place. We have a

temporary staff working for us for just a short period of time. They

are a wonderful group of people, and we give them a lot of work

to do, and we were just trying to manage the process by which people contact them. And over the last month I think we have made

a lot of progress, and I am hoping others agree and we can go

about doing the work that we need to do.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, what is your response to the chairman’s comment that he would like to do away with the long form

in 2010?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, I did obviously note that response or that

comment. I agree with the chairman. I think, as the chairman

knows, the Census Bureau has for several years been working toward establishing the American community survey. Congress has

funded this early preparatory work. We are in the field right now

to see if the questions bridge between the American community

survey format and the long form format in the decennial.

We are coming before the Appropriations Committee tomorrow.

We will be recommending in our fiscal year 2001 budget the continuation of that work. I do not see any alternative to the long form

other than the American community survey. I think some of the

ideas that have been mentioned in public that we ought to simply

assign this task to each of the agencies to do their own individual

surveys would not be a very efficient way to conduct the government’s business.

So I do think that the American community survey remains the

most innovative and important way to get the kind of data that the

country needs, not just the Federal Government, but the country

needs in a timely fashion and to do it in a somewhat different environment.

The questions, I should say to the committee, are no less intrusive. They are still the same questions unless the U.S. Congress decides we should not be asking these questions, which is fair

enough, we won’t ask them. But we believe in a sample format in

which you are only talking to a quarter million people per month,

that you are rolling that through the full year and the next year

and the next year, that you have the opportunity to do more education about the importance of these questions with the local leaders.

I think when—the important thing about the American community survey is that it is conceptualized to be deeply rooted in the

local communities, and when the local leaders understand these

are important data for us, then we hope that they will be out front

in making the case, and that will create a public education environment, and we will get high levels of cooperation.

Mrs. MALONEY. Although I was not a Member of Congress in

1990, I was a member of the city council in New York and was very

involved in the census and involving partnerships with the community and working with other Congress Members to get the response

rate up. I don’t recall any type of objection or conflict at all over

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the long form in 1990, and the form that we have before us now

is essentially the same, only four questions less.

You mentioned there was a disparity between the short form and

the long form after the second week; is that correct?

Mr. PREWITT. No. What I was talking about was some survey

data.

Mrs. MALONEY. About the response rate coming back?

Mr. PREWITT. Right.

Mrs. MALONEY. After the controversy, the response rate fell for

the long form?

Mr. PREWITT. No. Actually we have not tracked this day by day.

I don’t know as we would put much confidence even if that were

the case, because as the chairman said, we expect people to hold

the long form longer and to be delayed in returning it. So what we

are focused upon is the end point. If we don’t close what is now

roughly a 12 percent gap in the long form and the short form response rate, then, as I say, operationally we have more work to do,

and we also have the problem with data quality if we don’t get

those data.

So the most important indicator, I think, of whether the campaign has had an effect will be on item nonresponse. That is, if we

have millions of long forms that have come in, but there is not

much on them, and if there is a significant drop-off from 1990, then

we would be able to infer that obviously the conversation, as Mr.

Davis just said, the kind of suggestive nature of invasiveness will

have had an effect, and the country will pay a price for a decade

unless we get the American community survey in quite quickly and

fill in the gaps.

It is serious stuff, and I am concerned that people don’t understand what is at stake when you are talking about the CPI and Social Security payments, to say nothing of title I and Head Start and

Clean Air and all of the other programs, the dozens and dozens and

dozens of programs. But as I have said publicly, I think that the

capacity of Mr. Greenspan to report to this Congress on the state

of the economy becomes an issue if we have very flawed long form

data.

Mrs. MALONEY. My time is up.

Mr. MILLER. Is there an organized campaign against the long

form? A lot of talk show people are going after it. There is not an

organized effort to do it, is there?

Mr. PREWITT. I would say that I have certainly heard the leaders

of the Libertarian Party, that is an organization, and I can only tell

you from my e-mail traffic that when you start getting the same

e-mail time and time again, it suggests that it is not just random,

and when you hear the same sort of things in the talk shows. It

is certainly an environment in which it is easier to create a buzz

in the public discourse about something because of the Internet

chat rooms. We have people who track the chat rooms, and there

is a lot of it there. We have Internet sites, all of those things.

Mr. MILLER. Even Andy Rooney, who is not a conservative, came

out saying—this is more local with me. In Sarasota, I think it was

58 percent as of yesterday, and I was rather pleased that my main

county is—but the Complete Count Committee has received hundreds of calls from people who have not received a questionnaire.

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These are not communities with new housing units. There have

been reports in the Washington Post that local areas have not received their forms. What can these people do to make sure that

they get counted?

Mr. PREWITT. Obviously every time we get a report that some

area of the country has not received forms, we go to work on that.

If we get a report that these people got their advance letter and

their reminder card and did not get a form, for some reason the

postal service did not mail the form. So we hope that those forms

are sitting someplace in a post office and they are still in the mail

stream and they will get there.

But when you have a situation where no one got any piece of

mail, then that suggests that there was a mail address problem.

And if that is in new construction, we have finished our new construction work. We are adding about 375,000 addresses through

the new construction process, and they will be enumerated in the

nonresponse followup period.

We have to figure out first what is the nature of the problem.

You can still order a form up to April 11 by using that number.

We widely publicized that number. We sometimes deliver them

ourselves if we have reason to believe that it was a breakdown in

our system. We are not finding many instances where it is a breakdown. Sometimes it is a slippage between the Post Office box problem. We cannot deliver to a Post Office box because that is not a

geocoded address, and so some of the instances that we are picking

up in the press and other ways are examples of those. But we do

not ignore those. Every one of those we immediately, through our

Local Census Offices, go to work in that neighborhood and sort out

the nature of the problem and correct it.

Mr. MILLER. There is an area of Laurel in Sarasota County that

said they were not counted. We are sending letters to make sure

that people are aware that they will be followed up on, so there is

a concern.

In Florida we have a lot of seasonal residents. Longboat Key has

a separate set of numbers, for example, but they have large mobile

home parks for 6 months of the year. First of all, residents feel

they should be counted half in each State. If one lives 6 months

in Michigan and 6 months in Florida, they have emergency service

needs and such. So they are arguing that they should get counted

half and half.

One of the problems—and in a way I wish you could have it on

a form. If I have a place here in Washington, I fill out my form

in my home here, and I fill out my form in Florida. If Members just

throw the forms away it means that you are going to have to send

an enumerator to knock on that door. I got my form in Washington,

but it doesn’t tell me what to do with it.

Mr. PREWITT. Right.

Mr. MILLER. This is your second home. Longboat Key is a tourist

area. It is a large mobile home park in my district.

Mr. PREWITT. Obviously Longboat Key, the town, which is very

low, it gets 50 percent, but half are seasonal homes. When we actually report the final number, which is different from the initial response rate, which is the return rate, it will come in at 100 percent. So they will get that credit, and we will make sure that they

55

get that credit. And indeed across the country we know there to be

roughly 9 percent or so of seasonal homes and vacant homes.

Mr. MILLER. How many?

Mr. PREWITT. Nine percent of households or addresses in the

United States, are one way or the other vacant.

Now, I think your question, sir, on why we didn’t have a better

procedure in place for identifying the seasonal homes is a completely fair question. I wish we had. It would have been better to

try to identify those households so we don’t have to send out a nonresponse followup enumerator. Somebody will get to that neighborhood and say, ‘‘yes, these five people have all driven up to Detroit,’’

and they will be ticked off as seasonal and vacant housing units.

In my judgment, if there was a better way, we should have done

it.

Mr. MILLER. In Florida in the Tampa area, there were front page

stories and concerns about problems within the Tampa operations.

I am curious if you are aware of them and get your assurance that

we are going to resolve them. I think the GAO has expressed that

they would be willing to help out. I need to get your assurances

that the problems in Hillsborough are going to be addressed?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, two things if I could address there. First, the

response rate right now from Hillsborough is within 10 percent

lower than its 1990 rate. There is not any kind of big variation

from the response rate.

Certainly in Tampa there is an early and continuing recruitment

problem. That, sir, had to do with the quality of our management

staff. We had to change the management staff, and we think that

we have seriously upgraded it. I can’t explain to you exactly what

went wrong there today because the person who had to be let go

has not signed his privacy release form, so we cannot discuss that.

But the Census Bureau made the decision that we knew that we

did not have strong management in the Tampa office, and we acted

quickly and made sure that you do have strong management.

We are expecting right now in the Tampa office not to hit our

100 percent recruitment goal. We expect by the time we close down

the recruitment on April 19, we will be at about 70 percent. However, we have already determined that in the surrounding areas we

have an oversupply in our recruitment pool and that we will be

able to borrow roughly the same kind of people that we would be

hiring in Tampa. Once we put a good management team in place,

the recruitment shot up. It was not that the labor pool was not

there, our procedures were not effective.

The Tampa article that you referred to, and I have in front of

me, from the Tampa Tribune does use as its primary source of information the very individual that Carolyn Maloney just talked

about. When a member of the Monitoring Board staff says, ‘‘Most

cities say they are being road-blocked by the Census Bureau from

completing their task,’’ I would be hesitant to take that person’s

testimony as the testimony about what is going on. Who could actually believe that the Census Bureau is trying not to count cities

across the country? He is attributing this to most cities in the country.

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So I would urge you not to over attribute a particular newspaper

article, especially if the source of information is someone who is

willing to make those kinds of charges.

Mr. MILLER. There are problems at Tampa, and so the problem

is not just because one person made some statements that they obviously should not have made. They are legitimate problems, and

you are addressing them, and the resources are there, and I think

we can give assurances that everyone is going to do what they can.

Mr. PREWITT. Not just because the subcommittee chairman happens to be from that area, but Tampa was one of the problems, and

we did act aggressively and successfully, and I can be reassuring

that we are now on schedule, on target. We will not hit our recruitment level, but we—don’t forget, it is a 5 to 1 ratio, and so we don’t

need all of those people. Nevertheless we would have liked to have

hit our target, but we are convinced that we have the number of

people to do the nonresponse followup.

Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Prewitt, for the sake of our television audience and people who may be watching this, what should someone

do if they have not received their questionnaire and they would

like to get their census form? What should they do?

Mr. PREWITT. As I think the chairman correctly said, at this

stage the most important thing to do is to call the telephone assistance number, the 1–800–471–9424 number, and we will still try to

get the form to you. The reason that we stress that process is because by asking our system for a questionnaire, we then will have

your address because we know where we have mailed it, which

means that we can geocode it more easily when it comes back in.

In addition, we have the Be Counted system, which is a safety

net system. We hope that a lot of people don’t have to rely on the

Be Counted system because it is a much harder geocoding problem.

We want people to use it if there is no other way.

Finally, I do remind people there are certain people who do live

in new construction, we will find them in new construction, and we

also have the nonresponse followup. If there is an address, we will

be knocking on the door if a form didn’t come in.

Mrs. MALONEY. Again, for our listening public, if they received

two forms, if they have two apartments in the same city or two

houses so they have access to their other form, what should they

do with the second form?

Mr. PREWITT. If they have two separate residences, they have to

follow the residency rules, which are problematic. We urge them to

use the form at the residence that they most frequently occupy.

Mrs. MALONEY. And mail back the other one?

Mr. PREWITT. That goes to the chairman’s question. I got one at

a place that I am not living, and I mailed it back in. I put in zero

in terms of the number of people living there joping that we will

get that out of our nonresponse followup. It will most likely be difficult to do that, of course, but maybe they will come in, and it will

be a clue.

Mrs. MALONEY. Say someone has three apartments in one city,

and they get three different forms. If they would mail back all

three, would your system catch the name?

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Mr. PREWITT. We have a deduplication process, but in this case

we do end up with an overcount, and one of the things that the accuracy and coverage evaluation does is identify the number of people, the proportion of people who end up sending more than one

form in. In 1990, when we talk about the undercount number, we

talk about a net. That is a difference between the number that we

doublecounted and the undercounted. We try to find them and use

the accuracy and coverage verification to detect that.

Mrs. MALONEY. I want to emphasize how unfortunate it is that

talk show hosts have called the census long form optional. I want

to compliment major newspapers and writers across this country

that have come out with strong editorials in support of an accurate

census and in support of the long form and urging everyone to not

listen to any elected official who is saying otherwise. And I have

with me the Seattle Times. We have Roll Call, Tulsa, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Milwaukee Journal, the Atlanta

Times, the Sacramento Bee, the Memphis paper in Tennessee, the

Commercial Appeal, and they keep coming into my office, and so

I think the press and the country has responded in a responsible

way encouraging people to be part of this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER. I have several other questions, but for the sake of

time, we want to go on to GAO. I have some questions about proxy

data and close-out verification. I would like to discuss that some

more.

Did you see the Dave Barry column the other day?

Mr. PREWITT. Very funny.

Mr. MILLER. We have to have a sense of humor about this.

Mr. PREWITT. No, I liked that one a lot.

Mr. MILLER. I know that you are very loyal about this, but you

are missing your pin. Just sitting here—I know that you have dozens of them in every coat. You have been giving them away,

but——

Mr. PREWITT. I appreciate the chairman. Before we get off camera, let me get my pin on.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you again for being here. It is a tough job.

I encourage everybody to complete the form. In conclusion, thank

you very much, and I will see you next time.

We ask Mr. Mihm, accompanied by Mr. Robert N. Goldenkoff and

Mark Bird, to come forward, and I will swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

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

Let me briefly say since we have people watching this that the

General Accounting Office is a nonpartisan organization. They

have a Web site that says the GAO’s mission is to help Congress

oversee Federal programs and operations to ensure accountability

to the American people. GAO evaluators, lawyers, economists, public policy analysts, information technology specialists and other

multidisciplinary professionals seek to enhance the effectiveness

and credibility of the Federal Government.

We rely on GAO for all of our congressional oversight. We appreciate them.

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Mr. Mihm, you were involved in the 1990 census, and so we appreciate the knowledge that you have contributed to this. At this

stage let me ask you to make your opening statement.

STATEMENT OF J. CHRISTOPHER MIHM, ACTING ASSOCIATE

DIRECTOR, FEDERAL MANAGEMENT AND WORKFORCE

ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED

BY ROBERT N. GOLDENKOFF AND MARK BIRD, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. MIHM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney. It is

again an honor to appear before you today. I am joined by Robert

Goldenkoff and my colleague Mark Bird, who has data processing

responsibilities.

This afternoon I will briefly hit the highlights of my written

statement in six areas: first on the mail response rate; second on

recruitment; third on update/leave operations; fourth, service-based

enumeration or the counting of the homeless population; fifth on

Questionnaire Assistance Centers; and sixth, data capture.

First, in regards to the mail response rate, as Director Prewitt

noted as of April 1, the national rate was about 55 percent. Figures

1 and 2 in my prepared statement show the progress of the mail

response at the regional and local levels. As you can see from those

charts, overall the news is good thus far. Overall about 90 percent

of Local Census Offices are three-quarters or more of the way toward achieving the final response rate they had in 1990, which, of

course, is a higher benchmark than the Bureau has budgeted for.

Meeting that would go a long way toward ensuring an accurate and

complete census.

Second, the Bureau is making progress in meeting its recruiting

goals, but certainly continued efforts are still needed. As Director

Prewitt has noted, the national goal of 2.2 million qualified applicants has been met, but about 41 percent of the Local Census Offices have not met the March 30 recruitment goal compared to

about 53 percent that had not met the goal as of March 2. So we

are seeing real progress at the national and local level, but we still

have our 40 percent of the census offices that are not where they

need to be in terms of recruitment.

Third, over 24 million update/leave questionnaires were delivered

by 70,000 census field staff. While national data are not yet available, our observations of update/leave suggest that update/leave

made important improvements in the quality of the address list, including correcting for potential lapses in earlier address list development efforts. If these corrections are accurately reflected in the

maps and address binders and keyed in accurately, they will reduce problems with nonresponse followup.

Fourth, the Bureau’s service-based enumeration operation attempts to count individuals who lack conventional housing when

they go for services such as to shelters or soup kitchens, as well

as attempting to capture them at targeted outdoor locations. Despite great effort on the part of the Bureau, the inherent challenge

of counting this population combined with operational problems

make the completeness and accuracy of this data uncertain. Overall, through several dozen field observations in 12 different locations, we noted that the operation was well staffed and received the

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cooperation of service providers. In addition, enumerators largely

approached their jobs with professionalism and respect for the population.

Mrs. Maloney, you mentioned that you and Chairman Miller

were out in the streets and saw that firsthand. I had the opportunity to see it as well. For example, a team of enumerators I accompanied during the early morning hours of March 29, in Rosslyn,

VA, searched heavy underbrush along the Potomac River. This was

truly impressive. They searched under the walking bridge over to

Roosevelt Island, there were three different ways they went in, and

they were determined to find our encampment. They did find evidence that homeless people resided there, including the mattresses

and clothes and other personal belongings.

On the other hand, however, we also observed the challenges

that the Bureau faces in trying to count individuals without usual

residences. In some locations a police presence, the weather, the

tornado down in Texas, and the terrain hampered enumerators’

ability to find people living on the streets. In addition, however, a

lack of sufficient supplies, inadequate enumerator training in some

cases, inconsistent procedures for handling rejections and inadequate advanced planning undermined the quality of the count.

Overall, while these problems may have affected the quality and

completeness of the count and therefore should not be minimized,

it is not surprising that they occurred in such a large and complex

undertaking.

My fifth point is that the Bureau continues to work to ensure

that its 23,700 Questionaire Assistance Centers are available to the

intended populations. My prepared statement provides examples

from Laredo and Del Rio, TX, of some of the successful efforts that

we observed. On the other hand, we saw less input from local partners and less promotion in other census offices that we visited in

Oklahoma and Virginia, although assistance centers were open in

those areas as well.

Finally, data capture operations. As Director Prewitt pointed out,

the data capture operations are working successfully. Available

operational data tends to confirm that view. But some risks still remain that warrant continued attention.

In our February report we expressed concern that the short time

between the conclusion of the development and test activities of the

data capture system and the date when data capture operations

would begin created the risk that new problems would come to

light after the system was in use. This, in fact, is occurring. In fixing these new problems, the Bureau has had to delay some important changes. As we discussed at the March 2 hearing, under the

two-pass approach to data processing, the Bureau is making two

sets of software modifications. The first set of changes were completed in February, and the second was to be completed by April

27. The Bureau has now delayed completion until May 31 because

it needs to divert personnel to address the newly arising data capture problems. If new problems continue to surface, the completion

of the second release will be increasingly at risk.

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On behalf of the subcommittee, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney,

we will continue to track data processing and other key operations.

This concludes my statement, and I would be happy to take any

questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mihm follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. The long form—one of the questions that I asked Director Prewitt was about the differential on the dress rehearsal,

that was the 10 and 15 percent differential in the dress rehearsal.

Director Prewitt didn’t think that was a warning sign. Looking

back at it, it should have told us there is a concern about privacy.

It was too late at that stage to change the long form. We had to

get the data, but maybe there was some other way we could have

promoted it. Do you have a comment on that?

Mr. MIHM. I think there were plenty of warning signs in hindsight, and that is why the Bureau sought to streamline the short

and long form, make the entire approach more user-friendly and

have an advertising program that focuses on what the census

means to you and your community. ‘‘It is your future, don’t leave

it blank.’’ In addition to all of the issues that Mr. Ryan and you were mentioning, Mr. Chairman, there was a broad acknowledgment that

generally public attitudes and concern about confidentiality and

privacy and invasiveness were out there. In an electronic age those

feelings are certainly strong.

There was indeed a difference in the—or a growth in the difference in the long form/short form mail response rates between

1990 and the dress rehearsal. But on the other hand, as the Director has pointed out, mail response rates in the dress rehearsal are

not predictive.

One of the things that I need to take a look at is the differential

long form/short form response rates from the 1988 dress rehearsal

before the 1990 census, and that will give us a feel whether or not

there was more of an issue out there that we should have been attentive to.

Mr. MILLER. I would be glad if you would let us know.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. MILLER. Let me ask you about the data capture center, and

I think the report is that things are going well. You mentioned that

the Bureau assured you that the problems found in the four-site

test have been resolved. Please discuss the problems experienced,

and do you have documentation that the problems have been resolved?

Mr. MIHM. The four-site test was the fundamental test that the

Bureau did at the end of February, the 22nd to the 25th, that was

to test all operations in an integrated way. In our testimony last

time, we expressed some concern about the completeness of that

test and the lack of information that was available to us at that

point. We have since seen the report that has come out. Mark, you

are most familiar with that.

Mr. BIRD. Yes. We received their report on the four-site test

about a week ago, and we have reviewed it. The report itself does

a good job of documenting many of the problems and the resolution

of the problems. In addition, the system development contractor

has a process for identifying, tracking and resolving problems, and

that is an effective process.

By way of example, one of the problems that was identified was

that there was a discrepancy between the number of data files that

had been transmitted to headquarters and the number of data files

that had been reported as transmitted to headquarters.

That discrepancy has been resolved.

Mr. MILLER. You mention that the contractor proposed eliminating system acceptance testing to ensure quality to save time.

Please discuss that in further detail, and what are the implications

in that?

Mr. BIRD. In a large system development and acquisition effort

such as DCS 2000, it is important for the acquiring organization,

which, of course, in this case is the Federal Government, to have

some insight into the contractor’s progress in the development of

the system. Heretofore in the DCS 2000 program, that has been accomplished in part by system acceptance testing, which has been

witnessed by the government.

So if, as has been proposed, system acceptance testing on the ongoing development work of DCS 2000 is eliminated, we would be

concerned if there is no other opportunity for the government to

witness testing. We don’t yet know whether that is the case because the plans for the ongoing DCS 2000 development have not

been finalized.

Mr. MILLER. Let me ask about the recruiting, and I will bring up

the Tampa issue. Recruiting can be successful in New York, but if

you can’t solve the problems in Tampa, there are surrounding

areas that can fill in, I am assuming, in the St. Petersburg or

Lakeland or some close-by areas.

How serious of a problem is it? You said half of the local census

service offices are understaffed at this stage as far as the number

of potential nonresponse followup workers, and have they reacted

adequately to address that issue?

Mr. MIHM. About 41 percent have not met their most recent recruiting goal. This is a bit of an issue of concern. In a large national undertaking, a normal distribution applies. You have some

that are doing very well and some that trail off at the end. And

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the national numbers showing success are taking advantage of the

fact that the Denver and Dallas region are approaching 120 percent of the goal. And so it is a bit of a concern, or at least it is

still a reason to continue to watch recruiting efforts—as Director

Prewitt said, they certainly will continue to do aggressive recruiting down at the local level.

In regards to your comment about how feasible is it to move people across areas and have them work in different offices, in some

cases that can work. It adds additional travel cost, of course, to the

Bureau because they do pay mileage for transportation. The issue,

though, is that generally they find census takers want to enumerate neighborhoods that they are familiar with, and people want to

be enumerated by people that they are familiar with. To the extent

that you try and move people or ask people to work successfully in

different neighborhoods, you usually find a lot of refusal, and you

usually find that people are unwilling.

Mr. MILLER. How serious is that 41 percent that you are using;

41 percent of the LCOs are not adequately hired up?

Mr. MIHM. It is hard to say at this point. They have 70,000 people on the ground doing update/leave and didn’t report significant

staffing problems. As Director Prewitt noted, the big question is

when they are going to have 500,000 enumerators on the ground

doing nonresponse followup, and that becomes an enormous challenge for them. Thus far it appears that the recruitment program,

the geographic pay rates that are higher and more aggressively

managed than in 1990, and certainly the recruitment process generally is more aggressively managed than in 1990, seems to be paying off in many areas.

But there are these 41 percent of the offices that, in our view,

are the ones that bear some scrutiny. What we are going to be

doing over the coming days as we get a better feel for where the

mail response is shaking out for census offices is to compare these

two and try to come up with a set of offices that are having both

recruitment problems and mail response problems, and that will

allow all of us—and I know the Bureau does the exact same

thing—allow all of us to have a defined subset of what are the likely offices with the most challenge.

Mr. MILLER. Tampa had a management problem, and they don’t

necessarily correlate?

Mr. MIHM. Not necessarily. In some cases they do. One of the

things that I think is good to see this time is that the pattern from

1990. In 1990, they had a great number of problems with recruitment. In this—for 2000, you are still seeing some poor mail response. We discussed when Mr. Davis was here the problems that

they have having in Chicago. They are having some problems in

New Orleans, as well. There are 8 to 10 offices where they are having the biggest challenges in terms of mail response. Those are not

necessarily the offices where they are having the biggest recruitment problems. In some cases there are correlations, but it is not

as uniform as it was last time.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you.

Mrs. Maloney.

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Mrs. MALONEY. For the record, since it was such a large discussion at our last hearing, Mr. Mihm, have you had any access problems?

Mr. MIHM. No, ma’am. On the contrary, I was able to talk to senior Bureau people over the last week, spoke with Director Prewitt

and Deputy Director Barron today and told them that we continued

to have good cooperation from them. Our access issues were resolved. We had a number of people that were on the field during

the soup kitchen and shelter and the targeted nonshelter outdoor

location, they were very, very cooperative and very accommodating.

We are expecting that it will continue to be that way because of

the efforts of the Bureau, and certainly the efforts of this subcommittee, to make sure that we had appropriate access.

Mrs. MALONEY. On the substance of your report, your testimony

reflects the usual thorough job of GAO, and it points out a number

of what I would call minor challenges, but it certainly doesn’t seem

to be anything that would threaten the success of the 2000 census.

In fact, I read your testimony or hear your testimony as essentially

good news. Is that a proper characterization?

Mr. MIHM. I would agree, yes, ma’am. As we have been saying

now for many months, the linchpin of a successful census is a high

mail response rate. And at this point we are looking at a pretty

good mail response rate. Depending on the bump that the Bureau

gets over the next couple of days, the Census Bureau Director mentioned that they are at 57 percent, or that is the number that they

will come out with today. Within the next day or so, we will see

any bump that they got from April 1, and then if he gets another

hit coming next week, we could be well over 61 percent and approaching the 1990 numbers.

As we have said before, each percentage point is 1.2 million

fewer cases that need nonresponse followup and $34 million that

could be better spent.

Mrs. MALONEY. This is an important point that you raise. The

two principal risks that you raised in December were the Bureau’s

mail response time and also the tight labor market which you have

been discussing. Overall how would you rate the response rate?

Very good? Extremely good?

Mr. MIHM. At this point it does seem quite good. As I mentioned,

90 percent of the local census offices are at three-quarters or more

of the 1990 rate, which means that they are in striking range of

the mail response rate that they got in 1990. I agree with what Director Prewitt was saying, that the relevant indicator for most district offices is not the national rate, it is doing better than you did

in 1990.

There are some areas of concern. The big issue now is—irrespective of a good mail response rate—is to make sure that we get out

of the field as quickly as possible. Even with the Bureau’s assumptions, which would be a 61 percent mail response rate, they were

still looking at following up on about 49 million cases in 10 weeks,

which is shorter than the amount of time than it took in 1990. So

one of the concerns is as we get toward the end of this operation,

are we closing out those crew leader districts, as the director mentioned, prematurely, or what kind of controls does the Bureau have

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in place that we do not go to last resort or proxy data before they

should. That is the next big issue.

Mrs. MALONEY. Are you willing to make any predictions about

where we might end up with these numbers?

Mr. MIHM. I would prefer not. I wish I could. The Bureau is taking exactly the right position on this, and that is a tone of cautious

optimism. They know, and their response model shows that as we

get closer to that 61 percent and even closer to 65 percent or 90

plus 5, it gets harder and harder to get, because there is a significant trail-off in mail response. In order to get to 61 percent, we are

looking at basically another 750,000 cases per day in each of the

next 10 days. Can they make it? They certainly can, but on the

other hand, I would not be necessarily shocked if we came in just

right below that. But I think the news overall looks good for them

on the mail response rate.

Mrs. MALONEY. How is the Bureau’s Internet questionnaire progressing?

Mr. MIHM. It had not been tested before, and it was not something that they put an enormous effort in. The Bureau had established the possibility of getting up to a million responses to that.

The reality is quite a bit lower, and they are not necessarily disappointed with that. It is in the neighborhood of tens of thousands.

It is about 60,000 or 70,000.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It is about 58,000.

Mr. MIHM. We, at the request of the subcommittee, had done

some preliminary looks at the security provisions that they had in

place and came away convinced that, at least from the standpoint

of the stated provisions, that they did have a secure system. They

have done some testing to see if it could be hacked into. It has been

successful in that regard.

The big issue with the Internet is for the 2010 census. This came

very late in the cycle and didn’t get a dress rehearsal test. For

2010 we all need to look in a hard way at using the Internet, and

technology generally needs to be seriously investigated, and I am

sure the Bureau will do that.

Mrs. MALONEY. You commented that you felt the homeless organization could have been better organized. It certainly was not the

experience that Mr. Miller and I had. They even swore us in. We

said—they insisted on swearing us in, and we went out in a very

organized way with the count.

I read in the paper that Los Angeles, in that region they used

individuals from the homeless community to accompany the enumerators as they went out on the street. Was that done in New

York City? Was that a process that was followed across the country? It seems like a very good idea.

Mr. MIHM. In regards to was it done in New York City, I am not

sure. I do know it was a provision that the Bureau had nationally.

Those people were technically called gatekeepers, and they were to

be as you characterized, the representatives or very close or to even

the homeless persons themselves that would basically be able to go

into areas and say, the census is here, it is OK, it is important for

us to be enumerated.

In the observations that I did and my colleagues did, we didn’t

find that was necessarily the case that they used the gatekeepers.

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I didn’t find, certainly in any of the observations that I did, it was

a problem that those gatekeepers were not there. The census enumerators, as I mentioned in my statement, dealt with the people

that they were enumerating with professionalism and respect for

the dignity of those individuals. In fact, one of the mantras that

the Bureau had is that we do not wake up people who were sleeping, and there were a number of people that I noticed, census enumerators, were waiting for people to wake up. Once they woke up,

they would enumerate them. They made the correct judgment that

it is better to have enumerators standing around rather than disturb someone that is asleep.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. MILLER. I have a couple more questions. There was an article in yesterday’s CQ Daily Monitor about privacy on an appropriation subcommittee. There was somebody there from Eagle Forum,

Public Citizen, from Public Interest Research Group, National Center for Victims of Crime and the ACLU.

Privacy has become more and more of a concern. I think it is

worth including this.

You mentioned several problems in conducting the update/leave

operations. There are reports of children taking questionnaires off

of doors or gates. What impact will all of these problems have on

the quality of data from these regions? Should we be concerned?

Mr. MIHM. Let me deal first with anyone removing a census form

from a door. That would be then is presumably a nonresponse. It

requires the Census Bureau to hire and train an enumerator to

make up to the six visits to get that family in. That is a very unfortunate occurrence if it happens even one time, and extremely unfortunate if it happens quite often.

The types of problems that we found were twofold. One is that

the need to do extensive updating of the address registers, and the

maps suggest in a positive way that doing update/leave was an important step in order to clean up those maps, and may have made

some important additions and changes and improvements to previous address listing efforts.

The key now will be to make sure that the changes get consistently included in the nonresponse packet. If an update/leave enumerator went out there and found a problem with the map and corrected it, and that doesn’t get corrected, then the census enumerator who goes out for nonresponse may have exactly the same problem. There should be a house here; I don’t see that house. So there

are some real efficiency concerns in both of those instances.

Mr. MILLER. I am hearing more and more counts of late or unavailable supplies and also the questionnaires in different languages, both from you and other field operations people. What is

the reason for those problems, and how serious a problem is it?

Mr. MIHM. We are still trying to find out the reason. The problem is across virtually all operations and across geography in the

Nation. It does seem to be a nagging concern of a lack of supplies,

and we are not just talking about the papers and pens, we have

been focusing on training supplies not getting there in time. In the

case of San Francisco, the short forms that they used to enumerate

during the service-based enumeration did not get there in time, as

I mentioned in my written statement, so they had to photocopy the

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forms, which requires that when the real forms come in, that they

be recopied back at the local census office, because each has to

have a unique identifier on them.

There are a number of nagging stories of supplies not getting

out, and whether it be training kits or foreign language recruitment material, the census in the schools not getting out in time,

we are trying to still look at the causes of all of this. And it could

be everything from it is in the local office and they don’t know it

yet—we have all been to some of these local census offices where

we see boxes and boxes of material—to the distribution out of the

Jeffersonville center. We are certainly going to be continuing to

track the supply issue during nonresponse to see whether this is

a pervasive problem.

Mr. MILLER. One important lesson learned from the dress rehearsals was the importance of clear expectations between the Census Bureau and community partners. It seems that the partnership

program is having mixed results in 2000. Do you have a sense why

this is occurring? Has the Census Bureau performed outreach uniformly across America?

Mr. MIHM. They certainly offered. The 39,000 governments were

offered the opportunity to participate. As we have reported in previous statements and in a couple of reports to the subcommittee,

what we have found fairly consistently is a mismatch in expectations between local governments and the Census Bureau. Without

going too far, it appears that a lot of this mismatch and expectations was particularly prevalent among some of the smaller or

rural governments. Large cities have the expertise and experience

to run a complete count type of program. They know what they are

doing, and they understand clearly the stakes in an accurate count

for them.

The rural areas, especially when they have one or maybe even

two employees at the local government, to ask them to take on the

additional responsibilities of being the chief promoter and organizer of complete count in that community is onerous. They don’t

know how much they can rely on the Bureau. And so we have

found some unevenness in the promotion and outreach campaign,

particularly the complete count element of that.

In order to get a more systematic view, and certainly to build for

lessons learned, we are going to be doing some more detailed work

down at the local level to try to get a feel both in successful areas

and less successful areas asking what are the key ingredients of a

profitable business partnership so we can build on that for 2010.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you.

Mrs. MALONEY. My last comment is that I hope everyone who

has not filled out their form will be part of the census. Don’t leave

your future blank. This is a bipartisan effort. It is a responsibility

of every resident in America, and as you pointed out, it is going to

cost us more if you don’t fill it out because we have to have enumerators. So it is important that you fill out your form.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you for being here. We appreciate GAO keeping on top of the issues.

Next week I think we have the Congressional Monitoring Board

before this subcommittee.

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I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses opening statements be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

In case there are additional questions Members may have for our

witnesses, I ask unanimous consent for the record to remain open

for 2 weeks, and that the witnesses submit written answers as soon

as practical.

I would like to submit the Census Monitoring Board’s congressional Members’ request for oversight materials mentioned earlier

for the record. Without objection, so ordered.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:41 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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