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THE 2010 CENSUS MASTER ADDRESS FILES: ISSUES

AND CONCERNS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY,

CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 21, 2009

Serial No. 111–29

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

GERRY E. CONNOLLY, Virginia

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

PETER WELCH, Vermont

BILL FOSTER, Illinois

JACKIE SPEIER, California

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

JUDY CHU, California

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana

RON STROMAN, Staff Director

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, Deputy Staff Director

CARLA HULTBERG, Chief Clerk

LARRY BRADY, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio

DIANE E. WATSON, California

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah

DARRYL PIGGEE, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 21, 2009 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Groves, Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau; Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability Office; Todd Zinser,

Department of Commerce, Inspector General; and Ilene Jacobs, director, litigation, advocacy and training, California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. ........................................................................................................ 8

Goldenkoff, Robert ..................................................................................... 27

Groves, Robert ........................................................................................... 8

Jacobs, Ilene .............................................................................................. 69

Zinser, Todd ............................................................................................... 52

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

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 4

Goldenkoff, Robert, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability

Office, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 29

Groves, Robert, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement of ....... 13

Jacobs, Ilene, director, litigation, advocacy and training, California Rural

Legal Assistance, Inc., prepared statement of ............................................ 72

McHenry, Hon. Patrick T., a Representative in Congress from the State

of North Carolina, prepared statement of ................................................... 85

Zinser, Todd, Department of Commerce, Inspector General, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 54

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THE 2010 CENSUS MASTER ADDRESS FILES:

ISSUES AND CONCERNS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2009

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND

NATIONAL ARCHIVES,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:25 p.m. in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Clay, Maloney, Norton, Watson,

McHenry, Westmoreland, and Chaffetz.

Staff present: Darryl Piggee, staff director/counsel; Jean Gosa,

clerk; Yvette Cravins, counsel; Frank Davis and Anthony Clark,

professional staff members; Charisma Williams, staff assistant;

Carla Hultberg, chief clerk (full committee); Adam Hodge, deputy

press secretary (full committee); Leneal Scott, information systems

manager (full committee); John Cuaderes, minority deputy staff director; Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison; and

Chapin Fay, minority counsel.

Mr. CLAY. The Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and

National Archives will come to order.

Good afternoon and welcome to today’s hearing entitled, ‘‘The

2010 Master Address Files: Issues and Concerns.’’ Today’s hearing

will examine the quality and quantity of addresses encompassing

the master address file.

Before we begin today, I would first like to publicly express my

condolences to the family and friends of Bill Sparkman. Mr.

Sparkman was a Census worker found murdered in Kentucky. This

incident is extremely unfortunate and immensely troubling. Census

workers are doing a great civic duty for their country, and it is intolerable that such violations occur.

Further, I would like to commend Director Groves on his efforts

and concern for his employees. It is evident that the safety and

well-being of Census employees are of paramount concern to him.

I, along with this subcommittee, await swift justice for those responsible for such a horrendous act.

Also I would like to, on another note, recognize a group of visitors here who are part of the House Democracy Partnership. We

have 24 members of parliament from four countries this week for

a seminar on committee operations, with an emphasis on organizing and holding public hearings. The visiting members are observVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:07 Feb 18, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\54384.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ing video of a hearing and meeting with House staff and Members

to discuss the organization and conduct of hearings.

I want to welcome those members of parliament here from the

country of Kenya, as well as Peru. Welcome. Hopefully you will get

something out of this hearing, which I am sure you will.

Without further ado, on our panel we will hear first from Dr.

Robert Groves, Director of the Census Bureau. Dr. Groves will provide the status of the Bureau’s ongoing efforts to compile and update the master address file, including LUCA and its appeal process, Special Gulf Coast initiatives, address canvassing, and group

quarter validation.

Welcome again, Dr. Groves.

We will then hear from Government witnesses who will testify

and assess the compilation of the master address file. These witnesses will offer recommendations they believe will improve the

Bureau’s efforts.

Our final testimony will come from a stakeholder who will discuss her organization’s concerns about census 2010. She will provide her organization’s actual experiences with hard-to-count populations. She will also offer practical solutions to aid in the partnership between the Bureau and community-based organizations.

Without objection, the Chair and ranking minority member will

have 5 minutes to make opening statements, followed by opening

statements not to exceed 3 minutes by any other Member who

seeks recognition.

Without objection, Members and witnesses may have 5 legislative days to submit a written statement or extraneous materials for

the record.

Again, the purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the master

address file. This subcommittee is committed to reviewing the

daunting and critical task of counting the population. This constitutionally mandated exercise has wide ramifications. The results

are used to apportion legislative districts at the Federal and State

level. Moreover, the distribution of more than $400 billion annually

in Federal assistance to local, State, territorial, and tribal governments rely upon this count. Civic prestige, marketability, and regional political power also rest upon these numbers.

As we look forward to April 1, 2010, the subcommittee evaluates

the status of the Bureau’s efforts to count all inhabitants of this

country. The master address file is an essential component of the

2010 decennial census; thus, an assessment of the compilation of

our addresses is of fundamental interest and concern to the subcommittee.

Today’s hearing will focus on the Bureau’s progress in the compilation, scheduling, cost, and transparency of the master address

file. The subcommittee will explore all aspects of master address

file, including but not limited to LUCA, the LUCA appeal process,

address canvassing, update leave, special Gulf Coast initiatives,

and budgetary matters. The Bureau’s interaction and cooperation

with local and county governments, community organizations,

stakeholders will further be explored. The success of the census is

dependent on the quality of the address list.

I thank the witnesses for appearing today and look forward to

their testimony.

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I now yield to the distinguished ranking minority member, Mr.

Chaffetz of Utah.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for all of

you who are participating in this, and thank you very much for our

guests. I hope you find this informative and I appreciate your joining us here today.

As we work on this very daunting, huge, massive task of trying

to count every person in the United States of America our time line

is short. Here we have less than 6 months to go, and undoubtedly

the challenges will be huge. Of particular concern that I would like

to make sure of is are we up to the task of making sure that everyone is fairly counted, that they are not under-counted and they are

not over-counted, and that we have the tools necessary and the

technology in place in order to make that happen.

I have specific questions and concerns about the viability of the

work force that is being hired in order to do this enumeration; specifically, the practice of hiring known criminals. I know the background checks and the fingerprinting have been an issue, and I

would appreciate an update along the way in that regard.

And then I also have questions as to why we don’t or to what

degree we do utilize and tap into what we already do in the U.S.

Postal Service. They already have a Federal work force of hundreds

of thousands of people who go to every home, every address in this

country. I recognize some have Post Office boxes and what not, and

there are certain challenges with illegally subdivided homes and

what not, as Ms. Jacobs I am sure will address, but, with that

being said, mapping out this country, why we are not more closely

aligned with literally hundreds of thousands of people who do this

on an almost everyday basis is something I think is worth at least

a few questions along the way.

I look forward to your testimony and appreciate the interaction

today. That is what this process is all about.

I thank the chairman for the time and yield back.

Mr. CLAY. I thank the gentleman from Utah.

Would Mr. Westmoreland care to make an opening?

Mr. WESTMORELAND. No, thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you. Then, if there are no additional opening

statements, we will now receive testimony from the witnesses before us today.

I want to start by introducing our panel. We will hear first from

Dr. Robert Groves, Director of the Census Bureau. Dr. Groves has

authored numerous books and articles. He was a recipient of the

prestigious Julius Shiskin Memorial Award in 2008. He has a B.A.

from Dartmouth and a master’s in sociology and statistics, and further earned a doctorate from Michigan. Dr. Groves’ book, ‘‘Non-response in Household Interview Surveys,’’ with Mick Cooper received the 2008 AAPOR Book Award.

Dr. Groves began his tenure as Director on July 15, 2009.

Next we will hear from Mr. Robert Goldenkoff, who currently

serves as the Director of Strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office. Mr. Goldenkoff is responsible for reviewing the

2010 census and Government-wide human capital reform. He has

also developed a body of work related to transportation security,

combating human trafficking, and Federal statistical programs.

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Mr. Goldenkoff’s various works have been published in the Public

Administration Review Policy Studies Journal, Government Executive, and Technology Review.

Thank you for being here.

Next we will hear from Mr. Todd Zinser, Inspector General of the

Department of Commerce. As the Inspector General, Mr. Zinser

leads a team of auditors, evaluators, investigators, attorneys, and

administrative staff responsible for promoting economy and efficiency in detecting and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in a

vast array of business, scientific, economic, and environmental programs administered by the Department and its 13 bureaus.

Thank you, Mr. Zinser, for coming today.

Our final witness will be Ms. Ilene Jacobs from California Rural

Legal Assistance. Ms. Jacobs is the Director of Litigation, Advocacy

and Training. She has spent 30 years of her legal career as an advocate for housing and civil rights in low income communities in

urban and rural United States. Ms. Jacobs taught housing law for

the UC Davis Law School and women and the law for Yuba Community College. She obtained her B.A. from Boston University and

J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law. She has coauthored two publications on the under-counted farm workers and

indigenous groups in the census.

Ms. Jacobs is the CRLA delegate to the National 2010 Census

Advisory Committee, for which she is chair of an ad hoc subcommittee on hard-to-locate housing units.

Thank you all for appearing before this subcommittee today.

It is the policy of the subcommittee that all witnesses before they

testify be sworn in. Can I ask you to stand?

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. CLAY. Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in

the affirmative.

Each of you will have an opportunity to make an opening statement. Your complete written testimony will be included in the

hearing record. The yellow light will indicate that it will be time

to sum up, and the red light will indicate that your time has expired.

Dr. Groves, you may proceed first.

STATEMENTS OF ROBERT GROVES, DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS

BUREAU; ROBERT GOLDENKOFF, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC

ISSUES, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; TODD

ZINSER, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, INSPECTOR GENERAL; AND ILENE JACOBS, DIRECTOR, LITIGATION, ADVOCACY AND TRAINING, CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE, INC.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GROVES

Dr. GROVES. Thank you. Chairman Clay, Ranking Member

Chaffetz, other subcommittee members, I am happy to be here to

testify with regard to the master address file for the 2010 census.

When I testified here on September 22nd, I noted at that time

a set of professional judgments about the assessment of the 2010

preparations, and I noted at the end of this month we would be finished with our internal evaluation of the master address file. I reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:07 Feb 18, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\54384.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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alize the schedules of the committee didn’t work to hit that time

exactly right. I will tell you as much as we know, I promise today,

but there is still work to be done, and I would be happy to meet

with the full committee or any subset when we have that full report ready.

Let me begin by reminding us of what the master address file

is. It is literally an inventory of all the addresses and descriptions

of units, along with their geographical locations. It is the source of

the mailing of all the questionnaires and delivery of the decennial

forms, so it is a big deal for the 2010 census, and the quality of

that master address file is appropriately a target of this subcommittee’s scrutiny.

There are three major quality criteria that I will talk about

today. One is its completeness, its coverage, does it contain all of

the housing units in the United States? Second, are the addresses

on each of those housing units complete, or the physical descriptions? Can we mail or find the housing units in our later operations? And then third, do we know where these units are? Is the

spatial accuracy what we need to have for a successful census?

We have done three important things over the decade I think it

is important to know that were designed to improve the quality of

the master address file. The first thing that was done is a reflection of what happened in 2000. It was a result of the 2000 census

that there were more duplicates in this frame than were expected.

One source of the duplicates had to do with group quarters housing

units, and we have blended those two lists together with the hope

that will reduce the kind of duplication we found in 2000.

We have realigned all the streets and roads in the country to reflect changes over the decade, and we are fulling using, in cooperation with the Postal Service, codes that determine how best to get

forms to particular addresses, whether we should mail them or deliver them ourselves.

We have also been updating this frame throughout the decade

through, again, a cooperation with the Postal Service on the delivery sequence file, and then through our own field work in the

American community survey and other surveys, especially in rural

areas.

Mr. Chairman, you mentioned the so-called LUCA program,

which is the local update of census addresses. It plays, as you

know, a critical role. It is a key, both symbolic and real, cooperation with local and State governments throughout the country, as

well as tribal governments. This is an important part of building

the master address file.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you, along with Representative

Maloney, former ranking member of the subcommittee, Michael

Turner, Representative Michael Thompson, and a former ranking

member of the full committee, Representative Tom Davis, for your

support last year. You wrote a Dear Colleague letter in March and

you helped to spread the word about the LUCA program to your

colleagues on the Hill, and it helped, as you will see in just a few

minutes.

We invited in 2007 about 40,000 different tribal, State, and local

governments to participate in this local program. About 12,000,

11,500 of them, registered. About 29 percent of the governments

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are represented by that 11,000. That is a disappointing number

when you first see that, but those governments represent about 92

percent of the housing units in the country. So that is kind of the

first evaluation of LUCA that one could mount.

One way to evaluate it is to compare it to what happened in

2000. In 2000 we had about 18,000 governments registered. They

represented less than 92 percent of the total housing units in the

country. So overall on participation in LUCA we had greater participation this decade than last, and that is something that we are

grateful for.

We received submissions reflecting changes to our address list

from those local governments from about 79 percent of the governments that had registered. That is about 8,100 governments. This

compares to about 67 percent submission in the 1998 LUCA and

48 percent in the 1999 LUCA. So once again the participation, the

submission of these lists to us from the local governments was

somewhat better than in 2000, another good sign.

We then matched these addresses supplied by local governments

against the master address file and we sent out all those addresses

for the address canvassing operation that took place in the summer.

Let me mention a couple of things about other improvements in

the local update program. We had a single cycle of review. This reduced the complexity of participating governments. We had a

longer review period, 120 days versus 90. We allowed a variety of

ways to participate that seemed to fit the different problems local

governments were facing. We provided easy to use software that

they could download on their desktops to help. And for the first

time we allowed State governments to represent lower governments within their States. That partially explains the lower count

of participation of governments but the higher percentage of housing units represented.

The preliminary figures from this program show that about 8

million addresses were provisionally added to the master address

file for verification. Thirty million of the addresses submitted by

the local update program matched addresses already on the file,

and we had 2 million corrections to addresses.

Then, as you know, over the summer in 2009 Census Bureau

staff walked every street and road in the country and visited 145

million locations that consisted of the 145 million units on the then

master address file. The only areas that we omitted from this were

remote Alaska and parts of Maine that represent about 35,000

households of the 134 million.

I can give you the results of the address canvassing work. About

98 million addresses on that list of 145 million were verified as is.

Twenty million were corrected. Usually that was a street name correction, small changes. Five million were moved to another block.

Ten million were added. They weren’t on the address list before

and they weren’t on the LUCA submission list. So at the current

time, the master address file consists of about 134 million records.

That turns out to match independent estimates of the housing unit

count. That is a good sign so far in our comparisons.

The figures show that about 21 million addresses fall into either

a delete or duplicate or non-residential category. Sixteen million of

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those were deletes; that is, we couldn’t find them when we got out

there. And about 4 million were duplicates that were found to exist

in other places in the master address file. About a million of the

addresses we had on the list were non-residential. They have now

been omitted.

Two million of them were what we called other living quarters.

These are things like assisted living facilities, dormitories, group

homes. We sort of set those aside, and right now as we speak there

are people visiting those group quarters, because that was a problem in 2000, making sure we had all the unit identifications right

in those group facilities. We are out there right now making sure

we have correct unit identifiers, and that is going to pay off come

spring when we do the measurement.

With respect to the results of address canvassing on the local update cases, themselves, our initial results show that about 66 percent of the LUCA addresses were deleted, identified as duplicate,

or found to be non-residential. About 29 percent of the addresses

were verified, corrected, or moved, and about 5 percent were unresolved in address canvassing but will remain in the enumeration

universe.

We are now reviewing this operation, as I said at the opening,

and I am happy to get back to you when we have all of the evaluative results on that program.

You know that we have other programs that will improve hopefully the master address file. We are right now out asking the same

local governments to give us new construction updates. We have invited about 29,000 governments to participate in this. About 15,000

have already said yes, and we are off and running on that.

We are also going to make other updates to this file. We are not

through for 2010. We will get other updates from the U.S. Postal

Service, from the delivery sequence file. We are going to have a

count review program that is going to go out early in 2010, and

then we are going to have updates from other field operations. Our

attempt in this is to get the most up-to-date master address file we

can.

So let me sum up. I said there are three evaluative criteria for

the master address file. Coverage is first. Relative to 2000 I noted

that fewer governments participated in the local update program

but they represented a higher proportion of all addresses in the

country than 2000. I noted that State and local governments provided addresses that form about 2 percent of the total valid addresses on the file after address canvassing. And after address canvassing the total number of units on the file is comparable to an

independent estimate of the count of housing units in the country.

The second criteria is the completeness of addresses, and we

found about 2 million other living quarters that are now being revisited to get those addresses right, those identifiers right. We are

expecting a lot of these to revert to a single housing unit by the

time we are through with this operation.

We continue to evaluate the current status of the master address

file, and I am hopeful that I could talk more about this in a later

hearing in front of this committee.

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I thank the committee for this opportunity to testify and look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Groves follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Dr. Groves. We know you hit the ground

running at the Census Bureau, and we thank you for your service.

Mr. Goldenkoff, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GOLDENKOFF

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member McHenry,

members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to discuss the Census Bureau’s progress in building a complete and accurate address list. As you know, a quality address list, along with

precise maps, are key to a successful census. If the Bureau’s address lists and maps are inaccurate, people can be missed, counted

more than once, or included in the wrong location.

That said, compiling an accurate address list is no easy task.

One reason for this is that people can reside in hidden and nontraditional housing units such as converted attics and basements,

as well as in cars, boats, trailers, motels, tent cities, and labor

camps.

While these living arrangements have long existed, the large

number of foreclosures the Nation has recently experienced, as well

as the natural disasters that have hit the Gulf Coast and other regions, have likely increased the number of people living in less conventional housing.

In addition to housing units, which include single-family homes,

apartments, and mobile homes, many people also reside in facilities

called group quarters, which include prisons, dormitories, nursing

homes, and similar locations.

The Bureau’s database of the Nation’s roughly 140 million addresses is called the master address file [MAF]. As requested, my

testimony will describe the preliminary results of three MAF building operations that can help locate hidden housing units and other

traditionally hard-to-count populations. The operations we reviewed are LUCA, address canvassing, and group quarters validation.

I will also provide an update on the IT systems the Bureau will

use to update and extract information from the MAF database.

My testimony today has two main points. First, the Bureau goes

to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of the address file using

multiple operations that include partnerships with the Postal Service, extensive field verifications, and numerous other activities. Second, the operations we reviewed generally proceeded as planned

and we did not observe any significant operational setbacks.

Still, the overall effectiveness of the Bureau’s efforts will not be

known until later in the census when the Bureau completes various

assessments.

Turning first to LUCA, the Bureau partnered with State, local,

and tribal governments, tapping into their knowledge of local populations and housing conditions in order to develop a more complete

and accurate address list. More than 8,000 jurisdictions participated in the program between November 2007 and March 2008.

However, LUCA submissions generated a relatively small percentage of additions to the MAF. For example, of around 36 million potential additions that localities submitted, just 2.4 million or 7 percent were new addresses not already in the MAF. The others were

duplicate addresses, nonexistent or nonresidential.

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Address canvassing finished ahead of schedule, in part because

of improvements the Bureau made to the hand-held computers

used to collect data, as well as because of lower than expected employee turnover. Nevertheless, the operation exceeded its original

budget estimate of $356 million by $88 million, a cost overrun of

25 percent.

A key reason for the overrun was that the Bureau did not update

its cost estimates to reflect changes to the address canvassing

workload. Further, the Bureau did not follow its staffing strategy

and hired too many listers.

Recognizing the difficulties associated with address canvassing in

the hurricane affected areas along the Gulf Coast, the Bureau developed supplemental training materials to help listers identify addresses where people are or may be living when census questionnaires are distributed early next year. For example, the materials

noted that people might be living in trailers, homes marked for

demolition, and nonresidential spaces such as storage areas above

restaurants.

To help ensure group quarters are accurately included in the census, the Bureau is conducting an operation called group quarters

validation, which is going on right now. The Census Bureau developed and tested new procedures to improve how it identifies and

counts these facilities based on lessons learned from the 2000 census.

With respect to the automated system that supports the MAF, although the Bureau has improved aspects of its IT management, we

continue to be concerned about the lack of finalized test plans, incomplete metrics to gauge progress, and an aggressive testing and

implementation schedule going forward.

In summary, the Bureau has taken extraordinary measures to

produce a quality address list and associated maps. Still, accurately locating each and every dwelling in the Nation is an inherently challenging endeavor, and the overall quality of the Bureau’s

address list will not be known until later in the census when the

Bureau completes the assessments that Dr. Groves mentioned.

Chairman Clay, Ranking Member McHenry, and members of the

subcommittee, this concludes my remarks. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenkoff follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Goldenkoff.

Mr. Zinser, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF TODD ZINSER

Ms. ZINSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

McHenry, members of the subcommittee. We appreciate the opportunity to testify today about the Census Bureau’s master address

file.

My testimony covers three points, Mr. Chairman.

First, building the master address file is an enormously important and enormously complex undertaking. Second, my office has

focused a lot of our work on the Census operations used to build

the file, and, not surprisingly given the enormity of the task, the

operations are prone to errors and omissions. Third, Census continues to work very hard to carry out operations to improve the master address file and compensate for those errors and omissions, and

the execution of those operations is critically important.

The Census Bureau describes an accurate, comprehensive, and

timely list as one of the best predictors of a successful census. Errors on the master address file can cause people to be missed or

counted more than once, as well as increase cost and the public

burden by requiring enumerators to visit non-existent or duplicate

locations during the non-response followup operation.

After the 2000 census the Bureau launched an ambitious plan to

maintain and update both the master address file and the census

maps through a variety of operations. They accomplished some of

their plans, but still relied on a massive address canvassing operation at the end of the decade as the primary operation for verifying, updating, or deleting addresses, adding missing addresses, updating streets on the maps, and geo-coding every structure. Address canvassing employed 140,000 temporary workers and cost

over $400 million, not including the cost of the hand-held computers.

Our work over the decade on the master address file has identified consistent problems. We observed the 2006 site test in Austin

and Cheyenne River Reservation, the 2008 dress rehearsal, and the

address canvassing operation, itself. My written statement includes

examples of the types of errors and omission we observed in those

operations, including missing, duplicate, and erroneous master address file addresses, problems with listers not following procedures,

and other problems with process and execution. Our work in this

area has caused us to have concerns about the overall quality of

the address list.

The Census Bureau has operations designed to update the 2009

address list and potentially mitigate some of the issues that affect

master address file reliability. These include group quarters validation, the LUCA appeals process, new construction adds, and update

leave and update enumerate. These represent some of the most significant efforts planned and underway to strengthen and update

the master address file. It is critically important that the Bureau

execute these operations well. I believe the Census is working hard

to do so.

However, if we were to be asked what other actions the Census

Bureau could take at this point, we would offer two suggestions

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that could assess the quality of the master address file right now

and provide information that could be used in subsequent improvement operations and potentially provide the opportunity for additional address list corrections.

First, Census should take advantage of housing unit estimates to

help assess master address file quality. For the past 20 years, the

Bureau has produced annual estimates of housing units for States,

counties, and local governments. These statistics are used as controls for several Census Bureau surveys and could be used for the

decennial as benchmarks against which potential over- or undercounting of housing could be measured. For example, after census

2000, count comparisons for over 800 of the Nation’s most rural

counties indicated potential under-coverage in 275 of the counties.

Use of housing estimates could identify these types of discrepancies

now, before the decennial census, and perhaps steps could be taken

to address them.

Second, the Bureau could make greater use of administrative

records as another source for checking address quality. Such

records collected by all levels of Government and the private sector

are used by census in conducting several of its statistical operations. By matching current administrative records to the master

address file, Census could both assess master address file quality

and potentially add missing addresses.

Even if the Bureau determines that incorporating missed addresses identified in this process would not be feasible at this stage

of the decennial, there would still be benefits to assessing the address file and identifying areas where addresses are missing. It

would allow subsequent field operations to be alerted on a targeted

basis of the high potential for an accurate list for that area and the

need for greater attention to those areas.

Mr. Chairman, this completes my summary, and I would be

happy to respond to any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zinser follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Zinser.

Ms. Jacobs, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF ILENE JACOBS

Ms. JACOBS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking

Member McHenry and members of the subcommittee, for giving me

this opportunity to speak to you today about the master address

file and to recommend improvements with respect to the development of the master address file.

I was glad to hear Dr. Groves refer to the master address file as

a big deal, and I would like to reiterate his statement. It is a very

big deal, particularly to the very hard-to-count populations that we

represent throughout the 21 rural offices of California Rural Legal

Assistance. Our mission is to ameliorate rural poverty and to ensure that rural communities have access to justice and the provision of basic human rights; therefore, we very much understand

the importance of an accurate census and having accurate census

data, which starts with an accurate master address file.

I would like to speak about the adverse impact in the communities we represent of having a less-than-accurate master address

file and make some very practical recommendations for improvements.

We represent the hardest-to-count populations in the hardest-tolocate housing. We represent farm workers, the rural poor, immigrants, very diverse racial and ethnic groups, linguistically isolated

populations, elderly, disabled, and most recently many foreclosure

victims throughout rural California.

An inaccurate master address file in a mail-out/mail-back census

means that our clients do not have adequate housing, they lack

health care, they don’t have job training, they have fewer educational opportunities, lower literacy, they have fewer needed municipal services like basic water and sewer, they lack community

and economic development programs and resources, and it is harder to enforce the fundamental rights that they have guaranteed by

law.

The direct impact on local government is very serious, because

they lack the ability to meet the pressing needs of the hardest-tocount populations. There are social and economic costs not only to

our clients but to the local governments that are there to serve

them.

My prepared statement describes the structural bias in the development of the master address file. My involvement with the Census

Bureau and concern about the master address file started when,

after the 1990 census, we participated in a study that measured an

at least 50 percent what we called mega-under-count of migrant

and seasonal farm workers, and we attribute much of that megaunder-count to missing housing units. Not exclusively, but a significant part of that.

The structural bias in the development of the master address file

has not been solved. I give a lot of credit to the Census Bureau for

making improvements in instructions to address listers about hidden housing units and what types of units to include in the address

file, but we still have the problem of complete omission of entire

households because, in the hardest-to-count areas and areas of high

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concentration of hidden housing units, the master address file is incomplete.

And if the master address file for 2010 is incomplete, that means

that the master address file for use in the American community

survey, Census Bureau’s replacement for the long form, also will be

incomplete, and that will result not only in omission of housing

units but omission of people, and it will carry into the American

community survey a skewed set of demographic characteristics of

the most needy populations, particularly diverse racial and ethnic

groups and the hardest-to-count populations that we represent.

I have made five key points and five key recommendations in our

written testimony.

First, the hard-to-locate housing units in rural California and

elsewhere need to be understood. They are backyard chicken coops,

they are illegal garages, they are tool sheds that are rented out to

families to live in, they are single family units and apartments that

are subdivided into essentially one-room-per-complex household,

and that can be a family or an extended family per room in a sixapartment dwelling.

They are motel rooms that are occupied by 20 migrant and seasonal farm workers at a time. They are trailer encampments. They

are tarps and lean-tos built into canyons and the kind of housing

that is unacceptable in this country, but, nevertheless, it is spread

throughout rural California, and there are many similarities to

concentrated urban areas when we talk about these hidden and illegal housing units.

In our study after the 2000 census—and I refer to that in my

written testimony—we found that a very high percentage of these

types of units were missed in the seven communities that we evaluated using the Census Bureau’s methodology.

Second, address canvassing does not adequately identify these

units, albeit improvements have been made.

Third, ultimately, as I said, it skews the population profile because the hidden units tend to be occupied by the hardest-to-count

populations who then become very difficult to profile in the American community survey. This has a direct impact on all of our communities throughout the country, and it can be addressed in 2010

and in the ACS.

We first recommend that the Census Bureau adopt the address

listing protocol that we used in 2000 in the L.A. region to count migrant and seasonal farm worker units and hidden units, that they

implement this address listing protocol which was recognized by

the GAO in its report on farm workers, and would extend to other

hard-to-count populations.

Second, that the Census Bureau work with the regional offices,

census partners, community-based organizations, and local governments to identify areas of high concentrations of hard-to-locate

housing units and target those for tool kit enumeration operations,

and by that I mean specifically utilizing update leave and update

enumerate operations within mail-out/mail-back areas, not only in

remote areas, because that is where the update leave and update

enumerate type operations are utilized. I think they can be effectively utilized within hard-to-count and mail-out/mail-back areas.

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We also should be using the knowledge of community-based organizations in the LUCA process, which presently the Census Bureau

does not do, and the master address file should be evaluated in

2010 in areas of a high concentration of hard-to-locate housing

units. That evaluation then could be used to carry over the best

practices into the American communities survey.

I know I have run out of time and I apologize for that. There is

a lot more I could say but I won’t. I thank you very much for the

opportunity to testify.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Jacobs follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Perhaps we will have questions, but thank you, Ms.

Jacobs, and thank the entire panel for their testimony.

I will now go to the ranking member, who has an opening statement, and you can also proceed into your questions.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. You are welcome.

Mr. MCHENRY. And thank you all for coming back and testifying,

Dr. Groves, Mr. Goldenkoff in particular, who have been regular in

being with us, and I certainly appreciate that.

Dr. Groves, thank you for following through on your commitment

to testify frequently and keep us apprised of the process. I do appreciate all efforts that you have made. But I do think there has

been some troubling news that we have seen since the Senate hearing on October 7th, and that this committee was not previously

made aware of. First, the cost overruns, the significant cost overruns, I know they are not available, the cost estimates for address

canvassing in your last testimony, Dr. Groves, but certainly 25 percent, going over budget by 25 percent is very significant.

Second, although Dr. Groves had informed us at the last census

hearing that better cost estimation and control was needed, the Bureau admitted on October 7th that its models were grossly inadequate and can translate into future budgetary problems if not immediately addressed.

Third is the GAO study found that the Bureau’s fingerprinting

process for temporary workers was deeply flawed and could potentially result in criminals being hired as enumerators.

While I’m disappointed that these issues were not brought to our

attention, I have no doubt that the Bureau is actively working to

go through and create plans, operating procedures, and budgets

that are accurate and proper.

But, having said that, there are some successes, as the GAO report indicates and as Dr. Groves’ testimony indicates, as well. The

timely and comprehensive completion of address canvassing was

certainly a huge success, and the partnership programs, the media

campaign efforts have been conducted in an unprecedented level,

as no previous census has seen, reaching out to diverse groups of

people across this country. And the first major wave of recruitment

has met with an applicant pool that was much larger and more

qualified than expected, although the GAO outlined some challenges with that, as well.

The Bureau has also started with a 2010 local update of census

addresses [LUCA], as you all have testified to, that has been the

most effective to date. That is certainly good news, and updating

the master address file with that information is certainly good.

I want to reiterate my commitment to ensure that the Bureau

stays on track with its planning, execution of the 2010 census.

Dr. Groves, you should not limit your communication on issues

of concern to just public hearings. We would certainly appreciate

whatever updates you can give us so that certain things like the

budget overrun, we don’t have to find out about through newspapers.

As Chairman Clay has said and I will reiterate, our doors are

open. I think you will find that not just the ranking member and

the chairman on this committee have their doors open, but all the

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committee members. We want to make sure that this is the most

accurate census in our Nation’s history, and I think we have the

capacity to do that. As Mr. Mesenborg and Dr. Groves have testified, that is their intent and the Bureau’s intent.

So thank you for your testimony. I look forward to hearing your

answers to questions.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Patrick T. McHenry follows:]

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Mr. MCHENRY. With that, Mr. Chairman, would you like me to

just go right into questions?

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. Thank you.

Dr. Groves, rehiring the temporary workers that address the address canvassing, I know that is certainly what you testified to before. In terms of fingerprinting, what procedure will these rehires

go through?

Dr. GROVES. I want to make sure I got the question. Are you

looking forward to non-response followup?

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes. I’m sorry. Going forward, when approximately 570,000, 600,000 are hired for the non-response followup,

you will be taking applicants from the original address canvassing

pool first, of course, because they have gone through the Bureau

training. What is the procedure to check their criminal records?

Dr. GROVES. Well, let me step back a couple of steps to make

sure that I am answering your question fully. The procedures on

the fingerprinting are going through a critical review right now.

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. We are going to change some of those procedures,

with the aspiration that we reduce the problem that we found in

address canvassing, which was a failure to read fingerprints from

some people.

I want to remind the committee that the process by which we

hire someone involves, first, their submission and verification of

IDs that provide a Social Security number, a name, sex, and we

submit that to the FBI. No one has worked on the decennial census

nor will work on the decennial census without passing that name

check. That will remain true.

In 2000 only that check was used, and now we are adding this

fingerprinting process.

Mr. MCHENRY. Well, with adding the fingerprinting procedure—

and I am sure there are other questions about this procedure, and

we will get to that—but will all these folks that are re-hired for

non-response followup, will they be re-fingerprinted or will you use

their original fingerprint and resubmit it?

Dr. GROVES. It is our current intention for those who had fingerprints read, submitted, accepted by the FBI, we will use those

prints. For those who didn’t have reads on their fingerprints, we

will again go through the fingerprinting process.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK.

Dr. GROVES. Now, I should note that not all of them will be rehired. Many of them have gotten other jobs and so on.

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. The exact proportion of rehires versus new hires

isn’t really known at this point.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. And the procedure with those that have fingerprints that cannot be read, will they be hired like they were

hired in this address change?

Dr. GROVES. That is the standards we are after. I don’t know

how strongly I can say this, Congressman, but the safety of the

U.S. public is of paramount interest to us, and I am committed to

doing everything I can to achieve that.

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We have been working with the FBI after address canvassing

and we have made various changes, and they are, under the guidance of the FBI—you know, what happens is that as you age, as

all of us age, our fingerprints get harder to read.

Mr. MCHENRY. True.

Dr. GROVES. The people who didn’t have read fingerprints tend

to be older and tend to be female, empirically.

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. So older women have harder problems in getting

fingerprints read.

Mr. MCHENRY. My time is limited. I know this is important, but

if you could submit for this committee——

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to give you a detailed list of things

we are doing.

Mr. MCHENRY. Because I think the GAO in their report would

like to see that, as well.

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to do so.

Mr. MCHENRY. I have another additional thing. I read in USA

Today yesterday that the expected response rate for mail, the initial form that will be mailed out on census day, is 64 percent. This

is, I think, new information. It was 67 percent in 2000. There have

been some very substantial changes in that. We are re-mailing, in

essence, those that do not respond via mail, which was not done

in 2000, so the response rate was supposed to be better than it was

in 2000 because of that procedure, alone. Why has this been reduced? The 3 percent would equal over $100 million by the initial

cost estimates that we have, so it is real money we are talking

about.

Dr. GROVES. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. And I want to understand why this wasn’t

brought to our attention earlier and what your answer is on that,

as well.

Dr. GROVES. Yes. First of all, the 64 percent number I didn’t approve so I don’t know where that number came from. We are actually estimating that number over and over again. That is a number

that will be re-estimated over the coming months.

Second, it is important and relevant for the committee to know

that the response rates of every major national survey in the

United States and every western country is declining. Those response rates are declining each year. The American community

survey on the mail return rate is declining at between 0.5 and 1

percentage point a year. We have a population that is tougher to

measure than it was in 2000. We have, indeed, put in the design

features you talked about that go in the other direction that should

push it up, but the big changes in the population is a massive rock

to push up the hill and we don’t know yet how well these design

features will work.

Mr. MCHENRY. I mean, I read the press report that says Census

Bureau analysis, which I’d like to know what report——

Dr. GROVES. Well, there are a lot of Census Bureau analyses.

Mr. MCHENRY. Well, I’d like to see what you would submit as in

what you think the result would be, because certainly with your

history you certainly have specialized knowledge in this. We would

like to have that just——

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Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. McHenry.

Dr. Groves, we know that the accuracy of the master address list

relies heavily on close partnership between the Bureau and local

governments. Looking to the future, this partnership will again be

called upon year after year to help the Bureau produce accurate

annual estimates. We know that the Bureau is altering the census

challenge methodology. Will the census be working with local government officials like planners in developing the new methodology?

And if so, how?

Dr. GROVES. I want to make sure I understand the question,

Congressman. Are you talking about the population estimates program?

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. OK. Well, as you know, the population estimates

program is undergoing review. We have had outside experts in. I

am very interested in this program, to improve it over the coming

decade. We are going to have a lot more dialog about how best to

do that. It is a set of technical issues about how, in the middle of

the decade, you can get the best estimates.

The procedures that have been used to work cooperatively with

communities to update those estimates are worth reviewing. There

are complaints kind of on both sides that ought to be aired, and

I want that to happen, and I can assure you that will be an open

process.

Mr. CLAY. Can the new construction program be expanded to include all additional addresses that cities might have missed in the

LUCA process?

Dr. GROVES. Well, as you know, the new construction program is

limited to those local governments that have access to new construction administrative records, and that is a smaller set than, for

example, the State governments aren’t used for that purpose.

Right now under the current legislation we are limited to governmental entities providing us those updates, but the world is changing and it is worth talking about the future in various ways.

Mr. CLAY. You know, we are aware that the Census plans to

hand-deliver 1.2 million questionnaires to residents in the Gulf region. This is a great start, but my concern is the followup. With

the lack of mail receptacles and home telephone service in some of

the affected areas, what additional measures will be taken for nonresponse followup?

Dr. GROVES. You know, Congressman, I just spent yesterday at

our facility that is assembling the packets for the update. We call

this update leave. It is really cool. You ought to visit it some time.

But there are big plastic bags that contain little plastic bags that

have questionnaires and a letter from me inside, so they are protected from the rain. They have little hooks on them so you can

hook it inside a screen door if you don’t have a mailbox of a house

that is clearly inhabitable, thinking of the Gulf Coast areas you

were just talking about.

Mr. CLAY. Sure.

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Dr. GROVES. So I think we are thinking about the same things,

and so far I think we are prepared for that. I can’t wait to see how

well that works. It is an area that is rapidly changing, as you

know.

Mr. CLAY. I know on one of my field visits to the Gulf Coast region I was told by census workers that they, in some areas, they

have to take boats into the bayou and other places in order to actually, I guess, verify addresses first, and now I guess they will have

to drop those packages off by boat also.

Dr. GROVES. You would not believe the kind of transportation our

enumerators are seeking. We also had a request for mules on some

Indian reservations, because you literally cannot drive a four wheel

drive vehicle up to some of the lodging.

Mr. CLAY. OK.

Dr. GROVES. So we do a lot of efforts that are unusual.

Mr. CLAY. Wow, you are really preparing for this, aren’t you?

Please detail the update and leave program that is utilized in rural

and Gulf Coast areas. Upon recognition of the addresses of hidden

housing units, will there be enough time to input these found addresses before non-response followup?

Dr. GROVES. I want to get your question right. Could you repeat

that? I want to make sure I understand effectively.

Mr. CLAY. Detail the update leave program.

Dr. GROVES. OK.

Mr. CLAY. That is utilized in rural and Gulf regions.

Dr. GROVES. In the Gulf Coast areas, say take New Orleans, in

Orleans, Planquemine, and St. Bernard Parishes, these were almost all mail-out/mail-back in 2000. With the collaboration of local

government and civic leaders, we have identified all three of those

parishes are going to be entirely update leave, so we will have people on the streets going structure-by-structure. When a structure,

according to a set of fixed rules, is defined as habitable, they will

put a questionnaire on those structures.

In areas of, say, Tammany Parish, the same thing will happen.

So as you get away from the coast things get a little better, and

there are certain areas that we will do update leave, but they may

be surrounded by areas that are mail-out/mail-back, and all of this

is designed to be done in conjunction with local leaders who know

what is happening.

This is a rapidly changing thing. People are building houses now

in New Orleans especially, and we have to be very current to get

it right.

Mr. CLAY. And you did say St. Bernard Parish?

Dr. GROVES. St. Bernard’s is fully update leave.

Mr. CLAY. Well, it just causes me to ask the question then: could

this technique be applied in hard-to-count urban areas?

Dr. GROVES. It could, indeed, and a thing that is new-—actually

this is relevant to Ms. Jacobs’ testimony—one thing that is greatly

expanded this decade I think is really something that is neat, and

that is, for all of the census tracts—these are small geographical

areas that were found to be hard to enumerate in 2000—there is

a special plan for every tract. We have people who have already

driven every street of those hard-to-enumerate tracts, and they

have looked at every house on the tract, and they have asked the

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question how best to enumerate this area. If it is a mail-out/mailback area that they are concerned about, they will do separate outreach efforts to encourage response. If there are other things going

on, they have the freedom to tailor some of the methods they will

use.

I am very hopeful that this kind of customization down to the

local level could pay off.

Mr. CLAY. That sounds impressive. Thank you for your response.

We will now go to the gentleman from Georgia for 5 minutes, Mr.

Westmoreland.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First question is for Ms. Jacobs. Ms. Jacobs, in your written testimony here I noted that I guess it was in 2003 your organization

identified approximately 4,000 units that were not in the MAF, and

this was before Mr. Groves, but with your working with the Census

Bureau I think about 75 percent of them or a little over 3,000 of

them were included in the MAF. Was this a satisfactory outcome

for you?

Ms. JACOBS. Thank you for the question, Mr. Westmoreland. We

were, of course, thrilled with that outcome, but that outcome was,

first of all, limited to the Los Angeles region and, second of all, it

was based on a program that we undertook through our education

and outreach program in 2000 and funded research. That was unusual, and it was, I would say, unique. And it has not been otherwise applied by the Census Bureau. We had census outreach workers who were hired by our organization identifying units that we

thought had been missed or were highly likely to be missed, and

it was only because the L.A. region was willing to cooperate in developing this address listing protocol with us and was willing to

then take our 4,000 units back, compare them to the master address file to which we had no access, of course, and then able to

add units. But that was not something that had been necessarily

approved by headquarters nor has it since been implemented by

headquarters nor has it been approved or implemented in any

other region, to our knowledge. But I think that is an approach

that certainly could be used, and when I referred in my oral testimony to the address listing protocol that is what I meant.

I think that the Bureau has implemented a similar protocol for

the targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations, but that is going to be

essentially a 1-day operation, and it is primarily to reach the homeless. It will not necessarily reach any of the hardest-to-count populations that we are concerned about.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I noticed that in Dr. Groves’ testimony I believe he said that there was an outreach to approximately 28,000

I guess different governments, whether it is city, county, State, or

tribal, or whatever. Only about 14,000 of those had responded to,

I believe, being in the program. Are you encouraging some of the

local governments where you are at, because I know I read your

protocol and what you are talking about, people being familiar with

the area and the community being involved in this. Do you see a

role for some of these governments to play in it that could help in

that?

Ms. JACOBS. Certainly yes, and I think that the Census Bureau

has a good partnership program, and CRLA community outreach

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workers are a part of that program. We participate on complete

count committees in many local jurisdictions, and we encourage

local jurisdictions to participate.

One of the limitations of LUCA, however, is that communitybased organizations cannot participate. I think it would be an enormous benefit to local governments, as well as to the Census Bureau, to make use of the knowledge of community-based organizations on the ground in those communities that could really provide

assistance to very strapped local governments.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you.

Dr. Groves, it is good to see you again. We do appreciate your

filling of your commitment to come in front of us often and let us

ask you questions.

One comment I will make, you know, Mr. McHenry mentioned

the cost overruns. I will tell you that I have had several people

across the country in the real estate business tell me that the Census Bureau in different locations was paying anywhere from $52 to

$55 a square foot for office buildings, and at some point if you want

to come by the office I will give you some of those locations, because right now typical office space is anywhere from $8 to $10 a

foot, so you might want to check some of that out for your cost

overrun.

But, Dr. Groves, does the Census Bureau pay any outside groups

to add addresses to this master address file? Do you have a contract with anybody, pay anybody to do that?

Dr. GROVES. To add addresses to the file?

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Yes.

Dr. GROVES. The base of the master address file for this decade

started with the 2000 census master address file. If you go back

into the history of this, we assemble records in that decade from

various commercial sources, but we have been updating that now,

so to know the origin of actually every address in there is kind of

tough at this point. But this operation that we have done over this

decade has relied heavily on the Postal Service. I don’t know how

you count that in your thoughts, but that has been a chief updating

source for us.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. OK. And one final question. It will be a

short one, I think. How do you think the budget overruns in conducting the address canvassing over the summer will impact your

ability to effectively administer the 2010 census?

Dr. GROVES. Those budget overruns are intolerable to me, Congressman, and I believe, as I mentioned previously I think to the

committee, that part of it was from a flaw in the cost modeling

logic. That logic has been changed. Our big operation going forward, as you know, is the non-response followup operation. We are

undergoing two independent cost modeling schemes. One has been

partially completed, the other is going on now. I want to compare

multiple ways of estimating the cost, because I think that is the

way to protect your estimation.

This is a very complicated process. I don’t want to imply that it

is easy to do. It is very important, though, to get this right.

I am pleased that this operation that we are doing right now

called group quarters validation, where we are going out to 2 million addresses, appears to be on time, on budget, and that is a good

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thing. We can’t tolerate these kind of overruns in our big operation,

and it is not going to happen on my watch as long as I am in this

position, anyway, I will tell you.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Westmoreland.

Mr. Zinser, have you had further results or reviews of the paperbased operations control system? If so, please detail some of your

findings.

Ms. ZINSER. Sir, we don’t have any further results from the review of the paper-based operations control system, but we include

that system as a top risk to the census because of the late change

to paper-based operations. There are a lot of changes that have to

be done to that system, and that has to be a front and center focus

item for the census, and we count that as a major factor in trying

to determine whether or not the costs are going to be contained.

Mr. CLAY. I see. Dr. Groves, did you want to add anything?

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to comment. I agree. It is deserving of scrutiny by my two colleagues here and me continuously.

Mr. CLAY. OK.

Dr. GROVES. We have a big test, I want to announce, coming up

around Thanksgiving. It is a big deal for us. We have to hit that.

We hope to break the system in Thanksgiving in order to make

sure it is robust for the real use.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Zinser, how can the non-response followup operations be

made more efficient? Please respond to the question in terms of

cost and effectiveness. You do have some history with which to

evaluate this, I assume?

Ms. ZINSER. I didn’t catch the last part of the question, sir.

Mr. CLAY. I’m asking if you have any history to evaluate the nonresponse followup, its effectiveness and cost efficiency.

Ms. ZINSER. Yes, sir, I think our plan for evaluating non-response

followup is similar to how we handled address canvassing is that

we dispatched teams out to the field to actually observe the nonresponse followup operation, and by putting our folks out in the

field and observing how the enumerators are operating, we hope to

identify problems early, alert the Census Bureau to those problems,

and then they make changes. We did that, for example, with address canvassing when we observed a number of listers in five different regions that we were in not following procedures. They were

supposed to go up and knock on the door so they could get a good

map spot with the hand-held computer. They weren’t doing that.

We alerted the Census Bureau and they took corrective action.

I think that is pretty much our strategy for covering non-response followup.

Mr. CLAY. To what degree will the accuracy of the master address file be affected by the Census Bureau’s inability to track

schedules, costs, and risk management activities of this endeavor?

Do you have any figures for this?

Ms. ZINSER. I don’t think I have any figures for that, sir, but the

construction of the master address file, as we have all testified here

this morning, is a key operation, and what our suggestion is is that

they do some data analysis of the quality of the master address file

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istrative records to match against the master address file to try to

target those areas where there might be problems with the quality

of the file.

Mr. CLAY. What specific risk management activities are behind

schedule with regard to the master address file?

Ms. ZINSER. Are behind schedule?

Mr. CLAY. Yes.

Ms. ZINSER. Well, the Census Bureau has identified probably

somewhere in the area of 24 high-risk areas, and they are developing contingency plans for probably around 11 of those. One of those

is called the Housing Unit Duplicates and Misses. It is a contingency plan that they are working on, but it is not completed, and

I don’t think they have any scheduled date for completing it, so I

would list that as a key area to get some progress on.

Mr. CLAY. I see. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Goldenkoff, is it true that the FBI has continued to express

concerns regarding the Bureau’s poor paper ink fingerprinting

quality? Can the FBI guarantee a quick turn-around of check results following the fingerprint submissions? And if the FBI cannot

guarantee a quick turn-around, what is the Bureau’s contingency

plan?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I’m not aware of any contingency plan that the

Bureau would have if there is no quick turn-around. These operations are very short-lived and very often the people are hired and

will be hired during non-response followup, during the operation or

right before it is to begin, so it is just really a very short window

that the Bureau would have in order to conduct these fingerprints

and get the results back.

Mr. CLAY. How can best practices be utilized to ensure the Bureau provides a more reliable cost estimate for additional endeavors such as non-response followup, especially in light of the 25 percent over budget for address canvassing?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Well, certainly the Bureau does need to rely

on best practices and employ them. GAO has put out a guide to

best practices for cost estimation. This has been a longstanding

weakness with the Bureau. What we have seen is that the Bureau’s cost estimates have lacked detailed documentation. The

sources and assumptions that they have made were very weak or

lacking. They were not comprehensive in the sense that all costs

weren’t included. And one of the things I would just like to bring

up right now, you know, we have heard talk, Dr. Groves had mentioned about they are revisiting the mail response rate. Well, that

has a huge impact for the final cost of the census. A 1-percentage

point change in response rate, by the way, can have tens of millions of dollars worth of implication for the final cost of the census.

So that would be something, right off the bat, that, you know, it

is great that the Bureau is looking at that, but the question I

would have is to what extent is that being reflected in their cost

estimates.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you.

Mr. Chaffetz, 5 minutes.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Again, thank you all. I know you all believe that the integrity in

the process is paramount to successful completion and confidence

by the American people.

Director Groves, I would like you to get as specific as you can

about the policy and procedures—hopefully they are written—as to

the criteria what would exclude somebody from joining on and joining the census. We hear reports about criminals being hired to conduct the census. That is concerning to a lot of people, including myself. But what point, at what threshold do you say this person is

not qualified, and to what degree are people qualified even though

they might have a criminal background?

Dr. GROVES. I can supply that information. As you might guess,

Congressman, publishing that information would provide a set of

people information that would allow them to gain that system in

a way that might be harmful to the safety of the U.S. public. I can

tell you how we go about this.

We receive from the FBI, on those names or fingerprints that

generate a criminal history, the nature of the offenses. As you

know, the FBI database doesn’t completely give the disposition of

all those offenses. So we review this, we give a chance to the applicant to provide counter information, and there are a set of crimes

that are basically more serious than others where the applicant

would fall out.

I can tell you in the fingerprinting side that about 58 percent,

I believe, of those that had a criminal history come back from the

FBI based on fingerprints were eliminated from the group; 42 percent stayed in because these were crimes that were judged not to

threaten the safety of the U.S. public.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I mean, at least according to what I’m reading on

page 13 of the GAO report, midway through the first complete

paragraph, of the 1,800 workers with criminal records, approximately 750, or 42 percent, were terminated. So it would be the

other way around; 58 percent were actually allowed to stay. The

number 58 would be consistent. Why? How do we allow somebody

with a criminal record to participate in the enumeration process of

the U.S. census? I can’t think of any threshold that I would have

any confidence in allowing somebody to go knock on Grandma’s

door and invite themselves in to further discuss very pertinent personal information. I don’t understand what threshold of criminal

activity is acceptable by the census.

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to go through this process if you

would like.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes. That is why I am asking the question.

Dr. GROVES. The list of crimes that I talked about before are

things that—the process by which we make these judgments is totally driven by our concerns about the safety of the U.S. public.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So why not exclude all of them?

Dr. GROVES. Because in the judgment of the process going on,

these don’t harm the safety of the American public. They can.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And that is a subjective point of view that you are

just personally making on some—I mean, who is making these decisions?

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to review this with you whenever

you want, Congressman.

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Mr. CHAFFETZ. Right now would be ideal.

Dr. GROVES. I don’t have the list of the offenses in front of me,

but I could——

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I am concerned that it is a subjective criteria; it

is not an objective criteria. I think if you are going in and you are

asking for personal, sensitive information about their names, their

addresses, about what my 8-year-old daughter’s birthday is, I can’t

find anybody with a criminal record that I would be comfortable

giving that information to. Meanwhile, we have literally millions

and millions and millions of good, hard-working, honest Americans

without criminal backgrounds that are just dying to get an appointment. I can find no excuse for allowing somebody to deal with that

sensitive information in the American people’s homes.

Based on the information I am seeing, Mr. Chairman, we have

over 1,000 of them, at least, and that number is probably much,

much greater than that. I have a deep, deep concern. GAO points

out that crimes such as rape, manslaughter, child abuse are being

dismissed. I appreciate that, but there are a whole lot of other

crimes that I wouldn’t express confidence in, either.

Mr. Chairman, I see that my time has expired. For the record,

I would like to exercise my right to have 5 minutes for each member of the panel, but I want to be sensitive.

Mr. CLAY. We will have another round of questions.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Fair enough. I yield back my time. Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. My expired time.

Mr. CLAY. Ms. Watson, you are recognized.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really want to thank

you for having this hearing today. I can’t think of a more significant and crucial hearing when it relates to the Census Bureau’s ongoing compilation of the master address file. And, based on the

time-tested theory that the quality of output can only be as good

as the quality of input, the MAF is key to what we can expect to

learn about the United States and the changes its population has

gone in the last decade.

I think everyone knows I come from the largest State in the

Union, California, and 38 million people, and we get 2,000 immigrating into our State on a daily basis, and they surprisingly don’t

all come from over the border, they come from across the Pacific,

and so we are the first State in the Union that is a majority of minorities, and that brings a whole lot of different qualities to the

count.

I am sorry I missed the first part of the panel, because I know

you have given us very vital information, and so I would like to

know what challenges must be met to ensure a one-to-one match

between the residents of the Nation and the Census Bureau’s address book, and who we know is likely to be left out or under-counted, misunderstood, or intimidated into concealment if the Federal

Government’s message, methods, or motives lack transparency.

Now, once every 10 years I bring someone from the census into

my office, and I say, ‘‘Let me tell you, if you are going to get an

accurate count in my District you are going to go upstairs over the

liquor store, you are going to come out on Sunday without your clip

board and you are going to go to the playground at the school or

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at the church or at the park, because that is where you are going

to find a lot of people coming out of those cramped apartments with

their children.’’

So much depends on getting a picture of who we are in America

and how we go about counting them. And so, if I can, Dr. Groves—

and if you have already addressed this, then I will take the record

as my information—but an amendment has been proposed in the

Senate’s appropriation bill for fiscal year 2010 that would require

the 2010 census to ask about citizenship, and how do you believe

this would affect the Bureau’s ability to perform a full and accurate

count?

Dr. GROVES. Thank you for that question. As you may know, we

have printed over 400 million forms already. I visited one of our

facilities that had seven stacks of pallets in 400,000 square feet

filled with printed forms already stuffed, ready to be delivered. The

most serious problem of changing the census now——

Mr. MCHENRY. Dr. Groves, I think staff has a photograph of the

very scene you are saying. I don’t intend to take your time, and I

ask, Mr. Chairman, if you would make her time whole, but there

is a picture that you are referencing of those printed forms. I

thought it would be a useful visual for those here today.

Dr. GROVES. It is an impressive picture, I believe.

Mr. CLAY. Go ahead. You may proceed, Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Dr. Groves was responding.

Mr. CLAY. OK.

Dr. GROVES. So the Census Bureau, before I got there, followed

the regulations on how we should behave, and in 2007 the topics

of the questionnaire were submitted to the Hill for comment, for

addition. That was a moment to add a topic. And then in the middle of 2008 we delivered to the Hill, according to regulations, the

exact questions to be asked, and at that time there were no added

questions asked.

I can say with absolute confidence that if we add a question to

this census questionnaire at this point we will not deliver the reapportionment counts on December 31, 2010. We will not provide

the data for redistricting. We don’t have enough time to make

these changes.

Ms. WATSON. So what you are saying is that you have not considered immigration on this form?

Dr. GROVES. I am saying that the addition of a question

about——

Ms. WATSON. You have not—I just want to know, is there any

indication, any question relative to immigration on the form? Yes,

no?

Dr. GROVES. Not at all. Not at all.

Ms. WATSON. OK. All right. Now, I am also concerned about

home foreclosure and the number of people who have been forced

out of their homes and on the streets, and the rising jobless rates

means more Americans are leaving their homes and living in a constant shifting and non-traditional arrangements such as in their

cars, in tent cities, and on the couches of various friends and family

members, and all the while increased financial hardships may

make some Americans less willing to cooperate with the census

workers. What challenges has the economic and housing foreVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:07 Feb 18, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00102 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\54384.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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closure crisis posed to the collection of a complete master address

file?

Dr. GROVES. There are two things I am worried about. I am worried less about the master address file than the actual enumeration. The foreclosed homes—I was in L.A. 2 days ago—are largely

empty now. Some are not habitable now. We are going to spend

money on those houses by knocking on the door after we mail a

questionnaire to those houses, so there is a cost implication of foreclosures.

I am also worried about the doubling up problem of homes that

are the result of that foreclosure. There, we are redoubling our efforts to make sure people get the message if you have some family

members living with you in that state, to include them where they

live with you, even though you may not think of them as part of

your home permanently. Because they don’t have another residence, they need to be counted where they are.

And then the other thing you mentioned is——

Ms. WATSON. What about those living in their cars?

Dr. GROVES. Yes. In L.A. I rode street after street where there

are RVs parked one after the other and they stay there for 3 days

and then they move to another neighborhood because of the parking regulations. There are people living in these RVs. These are

people who were well off enough to have an RV 2 years ago, but

that is all they have now.

This is a challenge for us in what Ms. Jacobs talked about, this

3-day period where we measure these non-traditional living situations. It is a new challenge for us. Our local regional folks are all

over this problem, but it is going to be a challenge.

Ms. WATSON. I will agree with you. I represent Los Angeles, Culver City, Hollywood. I see them on the streets every day. An undercount has been constant in various areas. Every decade there is an

under-count. Therefore, the representation is off a little bit, the resources that would flow in that would follow the numbers in various categories we lose. So it is really important.

I think that even numerators who have been incarcerated can be

rehabilitated and can be very helpful in some areas of the community where they recognize these people and they feel more comfortable giving up the information about how many live in a particular house and so on. I mean, I have apartments in my District

where they hot bed. There might be a dozen people in a one-bedroom apartment. Somebody whose face might be familiar, somebody who has the charisma and so on, non-threatening type could

probably give us a more accurate number. So I am all for your figuring out ways to count these people.

I think my time might be up, but anyway let me go on to Mr.

Zinser. If it is up, Mr. Chairman——

Mr. CLAY. It is up, and we will have a second round of questions.

Ms. WATSON. All right. I will yield back and I will wait.

Mr. CLAY. I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. McHenry, you are recognized for your second round of questions.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Goldenkoff, I want to start with you. I actually reviewed

your Senate report and testimony, and you have added quite a bit

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to your testimony today, but the one essential part that is largely

the same, I believe, is dealing with the cost; is that true?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That is correct.

Mr. MCHENRY. So forgive me if I am referencing the Senate section here, but you report, for example, the Bureau had planned for

25 percent of new hires to quit before, during, or soon after training; however, the national average was 16 percent.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. Bureau officials said that not having to replace

listers with inexperienced staff accelerated the pace of operation.

The way you write that, it is basically a report from the Bureau.

Did you find that was true, based on your analysis?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Well, we did not independently confirm the

numbers, but based on our knowledge of the census and census operations we could see how that could be both a cost savings and

also make the operation more efficient. Basically, among other

things, it saves you training, for example. The people work all the

way through. They are also more experienced, they know their jobs

better, there is not that learning curve, so it would certainly make

sense that would improve the pace of the operation.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. So it is kind of interesting that perhaps that

lesson, alone, to know that because of perhaps the economic situation that we are in that people are sticking through the job, right?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That is correct.

Mr. MCHENRY. And the applicants are stronger to begin with.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That is correct.

Mr. MCHENRY. All right. So therefore we see perhaps a better result from our non-response followup coming up, based on that experience?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. It is possible. That is correct. You can make

the argument that there is a better work force going into non-response followup in the sense that they have employment history,

they have a work ethic. In the past the Census Bureau has relied

on for the 2000 census a part-time part-time strategy, basically

part-time employees, under-employed people. But to the extent that

you have a very skilled work force now that is looking for work,

those people tend to be better employees and more responsible.

Mr. MCHENRY. Additionally, what was the key cost overrun?

What was the largest failure of the Bureau with this cost overrun?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. There was actually several reasons for it.

Mr. MCHENRY. I know in your report——

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. A big reason was they under-estimated the

workload, the address canvassing workload. There were I think

around 11 million additional addresses that they hadn’t counted

on. Some of those came from LUCA. Some of those came from other

sources. Each one of those addresses had to be verified in the field,

and that is labor intensive and costly.

Mr. MCHENRY. Sure. And you mentioned 11 million, which it

says in your report that 11 million addresses were included that

were not in their original 2009 budget; is that true?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. That is correct.

Mr. MCHENRY. And that was one of the largest dollar amount increases?

101

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I believe so. That, and the fact that they hired

more listers than they needed to because they didn’t stick to their

staffing model.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. Dr. Groves, in light of this, what are you

doing to make sure that you don’t have a massive cost overrun for

all the processes that we have going forward?

Dr. GROVES. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. I mean, a 25 percent cost overrun is extraordinary.

Dr. GROVES. I think you could classify the things we are doing

under two categories. I view this as a combination of top-down cost

modeling where you take the 2000 estimates, you update them by

what has changed, and then you derive a new cost estimate, versus

a bottom-up approach where you get the components of the activities, you cost each one, and you aggregate it up.

The typical Bureau approach is to do a top-down cost model.

Those have been updated based on address canvassing results, the

new hiring and attrition rates, and we have changed the staffing

model going forward, so it took advantage of the information properly done. That is a good thing to do, but I don’t think it is sufficient, and so we are also building a model from the bottom up, getting activity level cost and then aggregating it up, and I want to

compare those two aggregate cost estimates.

Mr. MCHENRY. My time has expired, but in closing, you know,

you were here when address canvassing had ended. That was about

the approximate time you testified, and you didn’t want to discuss

the cost of this in that hearing. With the 25 percent cost overrun,

it seems to me unfathomable that you did not know that there

would be significant cost overruns. What I have said in every meeting with you personally, in public, and what the chairman has said

as well, and I think just about every member of this committee, is

that we want to be of assistance here.

If you keep us in the dark about challenges or problems, you know, including $88 million that was not budgeted for, it seems to

me that you were not keeping us apprised of this, and that is rather disappointing, and I would hope that whoever is counseling you

to hold back on that information, that you don’t listen to that counsel; that you come forward and let us know as soon as problems

occur, because we do want to be of assistance. We want to make

sure that everything is there for you so you can have the best, most

accurate counts. I know that is what the Bureau wants. I know

that is what you personally want. But you need to keep us informed on this.

I can understand if you didn’t know a 3 percent cost overrun, but

25 percent, for heaven’s sake, that seems to me unfathomable that

you didn’t know that. And so I would encourage you to come forward as soon as you know there are any problems or challenges,

and we do want to be of assistance.

Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. McHenry.

Ms. Jacobs, you mentioned in your testimony that many housing

units of migrant and seasonal farm workers are not in the master

address file because they are actively concealed. What do you mean

by actively concealed?

102

Ms. JACOBS. Well, I think there are several reasons for active

concealment. What I mean about that is that, ranging from the

owners and operators of that housing not wanting it to be seen and

therefore disguising it or hiding it as best they can, to the occupants of that housing not wanting to be discovered because they

are living in what would be considered illegal units or living where

they think they are not supposed to. For example, they are hidden

under tarps and lean-tos in the canyons in San Diego County, or

in L.A. County in onion fields. They are living in between trees,

under tarps. These are circumstances where they are trying not to

be seen because they will be dislocated from the housing. They

might be evicted. They might be threatened if they remain there.

When the owners of the property or the owners of the illegal

housing units believe that they will be either prosecuted or sued,

for example, by CRLA for maintaining uninhabitable dwellings for

their workers, they will try to actively conceal those units, so that

can be difficult for the Census Bureau. But I don’t think active concealment is the biggest problem that we have.

Mr. CLAY. Well, how can the Census Bureau get a better count

of these populations?

Ms. JACOBS. Well, I think the example that we gave in our written testimony, which was also cited in 2003 by the GAO report on

the address listing protocol that we used, is the best example. We

have trusted faces in the community. We have reliable community

outreach workers that work for local community-based organizations who know where this housing is located who can work in

partnership with the Census Bureau to assist both in address listing and in enumeration of these locations. They know where they

are. They are trusted by the occupants. They can go a long way to

opening doors, so to speak, for the Census Bureau.

Mr. CLAY. You know, the deplorable conditions for housing for

immigrant workers are not confined to migrant farm workers. Recent immigrants to this country have the same living conditions in

cities, just as Ms. Watson pointed out. What are some examples of

low-visibility units in cities that do not have postal addresses, and

how are they reached by Census workers?

Ms. JACOBS. I think that the problems in isolated rural areas and

the types of housing in which migrant and seasonal farm workers

live are very similar to the small towns in agricultural communities, as well as many of the inner city areas where there are illegal units that are being rented out, there are illegal garages that

are being rented out. Underneath someone’s porch is being rented

out as a ‘‘habitable’’ dwelling. Again, there is local knowledge of

where these units are and, more importantly, I think that the Census Bureau’s own hard-to-count database can be improved, enhanced, and utilized to target special enumeration procedures in

areas that have a high concentration of hidden housing units. I

think that can be used in rural areas, as well as in inner city urban

areas, and it should be done regardless of whether those areas are

considered mail-out/mail-back areas. They still need to be targeted

for enumeration that is not done by mail, or we will miss not only

entire housing units but we will continue to have people omitted

from households.

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Mr. CLAY. You know, speaking of omissions, in 1990 it was estimated that 48 to 52 percent of the migrant seasonal farm workers

were under-counted. A large part of the under-count was attributed

to total household omissions. What is the extent of these problems

heading into the 2010 decennial? What do you see them as?

Ms. JACOBS. I believe that 2010 will have very similar problems.

I give the Census Bureau credit for developing improved job aids

and improved instructions and training to their address listers and

enumerators, but I think that a lot more needs to be done in order

to ensure that the locations are identified for the Census Bureau

so that addresses can be added to the address file at any time

through non-response followup, as well as during the decade, and

so that again these areas can be targeted for special enumeration

procedures.

Mr. CLAY. What suggestion do you have for collaboration between the Bureau and groups like yours to get these addresses in

the file?

Ms. JACOBS. Well, we certainly take advantage of the partnership

opportunities that the Census Bureau offers and we encourage and

we train other community-based organizations to do the same. I

think, however, that the Census Bureau could make better and

more use of local knowledge and community-based organizations in

its LUCA process, as well as in address canvassing and by using

the special protocol that we described in our written testimony.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much for your response.

The gentleman from Utah is recognized.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Goldenkoff, I would like to go back to the questioning we

were doing with Director Groves, talking specifically about the

criminal element that seems to be acceptable to Census Bureau.

Can you give me your perspective on that situation? Are there criteria? Are they objective? Subjective? How many people are we

talking about here?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. I don’t know. We have not seen the actual list.

I mean, obviously some crimes are less severe than others, but

which ones would allow you census jobs and which ones will not,

we don’t know because we haven’t seen the list.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Is there any written criteria for this, or is this

just something that is just done on the fly and very subjective?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. We have not looked into that, so I do not

know.

Ms. ZINSER. Sir, can I address that?

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes. Yes, please.

Ms. ZINSER. I became the IG at Commerce in late December

2007/January 2008. By Federal of 2008 we were alerting the Department and the Census Bureau that they had to get on this fingerprint issue.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Yes.

Ms. ZINSER. And they weren’t prepared for it, and it took them

6 to 8 months to get ready for fingerprinting, and the original estimates for fingerprinting were up in the $600 million and $700 million. Our office worked with them for 6 or 7 months, working on

their cost estimate.

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There is criteria, and there is criteria in other Federal jobs, also.

My most recent experience before Commerce was at transportation

and transportation security. There are common lists of offenses

that the Federal Government refers to in terms of whether somebody is qualified or disqualified. One of the things we recommended for the Census Bureau was, in the past they would let

local or regional offices make determinations on which crimes are

disqualifying and which crimes aren’t. We recommended that they

centralize that in an office called CHECK. I can’t tell you what that

exactly stands for, but there is an office in Census headquarters

that has centralized these kind of determinations, and we think

that is a good practice.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Is there written criteria?

Ms. ZINSER. Yes, there is. I think that doesn’t eliminate all subjectivity. I think you do have to make some judgments. For example, how long ago the offense occurred? Is it a misdemeanor? Is it

a felony? Is it a violent crime, non-violent crime?

And I also know that the Census Bureau has been consulting

with the FBI on those types of issues.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. My concern is that we just are somewhat in the

dark on this. Again, it is giving the confidence of the integrity of

the process and the people that are going to be knocking on their

door, because, unlike most other Federal jobs, they are actually

going to be going up and approaching somebody in their home and

asking for sensitive information that can lead to other nefarious

types of activities, and thus the concern.

There are certainly a number of other types of Government jobs

that somebody with a criminal background can participate in,

whether it is the Department of Transportation or Member of Congress, whatever it might be, right? But in terms of the census, I

think there is a great deal of sensitivity.

Going back to Director Groves, how many people are we talking

about, because, at least the way I read and interpret the numbers

from the GAO report, we are talking over a thousand people. It is

not a small, ‘‘Hey, we have a handful here or there.’’ I recognize

the totality of the effort that is going on, but this seems like a rather large—and I sense a degree of secrecy that you want to keep

from this committee in allowing us to understand so they can’t

‘‘game the system’’ that I just find wholly unacceptable. I think

there is a great deal of fear that will be created probably on the

other end of it by being so secretive about what is acceptable and

what is not acceptable.

Dr. GROVES. I can say, Congressman, that everything we do is

in compliance with OPM guidelines that are, indeed, published. I

don’t have those with me, but I can supply those. So we are following that as well as we can.

I think the other thing to note, just to make sure that I am communicating the facts correctly, is that the existence of a record in

the FBI doesn’t imply conviction of a crime.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So if somebody has been charged with a crime but

not convicted, are they allowed to be an enumerator?

Dr. GROVES. What happens then is that the applicant is required

by us to provide court certified documentation on the outcome of

the case.

105

Mr. CHAFFETZ. If they have——

Dr. GROVES. That is following the OPM guidelines.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And we are talking about tens of thousands of

people here who have not completed the background process; that

is, they have not had their fingerprinting processed by the FBI. Are

those people allowed to start work, even though they haven’t completed that process? Because it looks like, based on what has been

going on in surveying and going out to all the neighborhoods and

trying to figure out the maps and all that, that those people have

actually been employed and working, despite what ultimately concluded was unacceptable, nefarious behavior.

Dr. GROVES. This group has universally passed the FBI name

check that is based on name, date of birth, Social Security, and

found——

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Do you use e-verify?

Dr. GROVES. We do use e-verify as part of the employment process. In addition to that, then we do the FBI name check. So everyone has passed that.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So all of those names have gone through the everify process?

Dr. GROVES. All of those names, to my knowledge, have gone

through the e-verify process.

Mr. CLAY. The gentleman from Utah’s time has expired.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Understood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. The gentleman from North Carolina?

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly.

Dr. Groves, does the Bureau have a set of internal procedures

and policies on what is a disqualifier in terms of criminal records?

Dr. GROVES. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. Mr. Goldenkoff, has that been verified by

GAO?

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. They do.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. Mr. Zinser.

Ms. ZINSER. Yes, sir, I have seen them.

Mr. MCHENRY. All right. Mr. Groves, are you confident that

there are no violent criminals that work for the Census Bureau?

Dr. GROVES. I am confident that the people employed by the Census Bureau have gone through this process and have been judged

as not having a criminal history under the process.

Mr. MCHENRY. Sure. And would the three of you agree to followup with Mr. Chaffetz and his staff in regards to his line of questioning?

Dr. GROVES. I would be happy to.

Mr. GOLDENKOFF. Yes, sir.

Ms. ZINSER. Yes.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK. Thank you all for that, and thank you for

your testimony today.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. MCHENRY. Sure.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. I won’t keep everybody all day, I

promise.

Mr. CLAY. The gentleman is recognized.

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Mr. MCHENRY. I asked the chairman for 1 minute, so I think you

have a——

Mr. CHAFFETZ. OK. Thank you.

What percentage of the people going through the process go

through the fingerprinting process? It is 100 percent; is that correct?

Dr. GROVES. We don’t hire anyone who doesn’t pass the name

check. All the people who pass the name check then are submitted

to the fingerprinting—who we wish to hire, are submitted.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. And how long does it take? You know, they fill

out their application, and then—I mean, the FBI, are they

taking——

Dr. GROVES. This is done on the first day of training. There are

two cards made.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Right.

Dr. GROVES. By two different fingerprinters. Those cards are

FedExed to our national processing center and then electronically

transmitted to the FBI. The turn-around time on the FBI in the

last operation was about 22 hours. That process seems to be working. We beefed up the electronic pipeline to that, and we are doing

a big load test of that. We are going to simulate a million hires

through the FBI’s submission process, just to make sure we can do

that volume when we have to.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. What is the biggest concern that you have at this

moment? All things considered, what is your biggest concern?

Dr. GROVES. About what? About the entire 2010 census?

Mr. CHAFFETZ. The entire totality of the process. When you wake

up in the morning and say, ‘‘Oh, my goodness, this is my biggest

concern,’’ what would it be?

Dr. GROVES. I’m most worried about the behavior of the American public, whether they will return this questionnaire at the

rates we hope they will, and that the leadership of this country ignites and energizes themselves to encourage that participation. We

need you at this moment.

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your indulgence.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chaffetz.

The Director couldn’t summarize it better. I want to thank the

panel for your testimony today.

That concludes the hearing. Hearing adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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