Among other things, the Panel is reviewing the statistical methods and operations of the A.C.E. and Dual System Estimation. The Census Bureau prepared several documents for a Panel workshop in February, and these documents, listed in the Appendix, were made available then and by separate letter in early April to you, Chairman Miller, and to Mrs. Maloney, Chairman Rogers, and Mr. Serrano. Subcommittee staff were briefed on these documents by John Thompson and Howard Hogan on April 17. Now, I will describe the basic A.C.E. operations. Several major A.C.E. operations have been completed, one is ongoing, and others will follow the completion of nonresponse followup.
All operations are currently on schedule.
Because of its small size relative to the initial census, we believe we can do a better job enumerating people in the housing units in the sample. We can be more selective about the interviewers, train them longer and pay them more, and provide more quality assurance. We selected the initial sample in the first half of 1999 and subsampled in early 2000 to provide a more efficient sample design and meet our field requirements. By independent, we mean that we do not start with or refer to the Census 2000 Master Address File, but, instead, have census staff systematically canvass the block clusters to list addresses. This listing was completed in the fall of 1999, and then addresses were checked in, keyed, and 100-percent quality controlled in our National Processing Center.