The Decennial Census is at a critical stage in the 2008 Dress Rehearsal, in which the Bureau has its last opportunity to test its plans for 2010 under census-like conditions. The dress rehearsal features a mock Census Day, now set for May 1, 2008. Last year at this time, the Bureau carried out a major dress rehearsal operation—address canvassing—in which the Bureau updated address lists and collected global positioning coordinates for mapspots. The largest field operation of the dress rehearsal was to have begun this month. In this operation (nonresponse follow-up), field staff were to conduct face-to-face interviews with households that did not mail back their questionnaires. Prior to the redesigning effort, the Bureau had already changed its plans for the dress rehearsal, in part, to focus greater attention on the testing of technology. In a November 20, 2007, decision memo, the Bureau announced that it would delay Census Day for the dress rehearsal by 1 month, to May 1, 2008. The Bureau also listed a number of operations it no longer planned to rehearse, including group quarters enumeration and census coverage measurement. Also in February 2008, the Bureau announced that it would remove from the scope of the FDCA program contract the development of all systems and software associated with the census coverage measurement operation. The redesign approach selected by the Secretary will require that the Bureau quickly develop and test a paper-based nonresponse follow-up operation. Any paper-based option has its own set of unique issues, such as setting up operations to support paper field data collection centers and seeking printing solutions for enumerator forms. Among other issues, decisions on a printing solution will need to be made soon. Although the Bureau has carried out paper-based operations before, in some cases they now involve new procedures and system interfaces that as a result of their exclusion from the dress rehearsal, will not be tested under census-like conditions. For nonresponse follow-up in 2010 the Bureau will be using newly developed systems for integrating responses and controlling workload. For example, the Bureau will need to rely on a newly developed system called the Decennial Response Integration System to help identify households that have not returned census forms and for collecting the results of enumerators conducting nonresponse follow-up person interviews. Dropping the use of the HHCs for nonresponse follow-up and reverting to paper for that operation this late in the decade also precludes nonresponse follow-up from being fully tested in the dress rehearsal. Under the delayed dress rehearsal this operation was to begin next month, soon after households in dress rehearsal locations were to return their census forms. A paper operation requires different training, maps, and other material to be prepared prior to the operation. The Bureau has announced no specific plans for conducting field testing of certain key operations, such as nonresponse follow-up. Without sufficient testing, operational problems can go undiscovered and the opportunity to improve operations will be lost. The redesign’s move from the use of HHCs to a paper-based nonresponse follow-up operation may limit the Bureau’s ability to reduce follow-up with persons who are late in returning their census questionnaires. One of the primary advantages the Bureau cited for using HHCs was the ability, as late mail returns came in, to remove those addresses from enumerators’ assignments—preventing enumerators from doing unnecessary work. According to the Bureau, in 2000 enumerators visited over 4 million households that had returned their census form late. In 2004, the Bureau tested the capability of an earlier prototype of the HHC to adjust workloads by identifying late mail returns. We reported in 2007 that based on these tests it appears that if the Bureau had possessed this capability during the 2000 Census, it could have eliminated the need to visit nearly 773,000 late-responding households and saved an estimated $22 million (based on our estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in workload could add at least $34 million in direct salary, benefits, and travel costs to the price tag of nonresponse follow-up). The Director of the Census Bureau stated that he believes that the Bureau can still partially adjust enumerator workload to recognize late mail returns without the use of HHCs. To achieve this objective, the Bureau will need to specify the process it will use and conduct appropriate tests. The redesign will also affect the 2010 Census address canvassing operation. The Secretary’s decision to use the HHCs for the 2010 address canvassing operation means that certain performance issues with the handheld technology must be addressed promptly. Field staff experienced difficulties using the technology during the address canvassing dress rehearsal. For example, workers reported problems with HHCs when working in large assignment areas during address canvassing. The devices could not accommodate more than 720 addresses—3 percent of dress rehearsal assignment areas were larger than that. The amount of data transmitted and used slowed down the HHCs significantly. Identification of these problems caused the contractor to create a task team to examine the issues, and the team recommended improving the end-to-end performance of the mobile solution by controlling the size of assignment area data delivered to the HHC both for address canvassing and nonresponse follow-up operations. One specific recommendation was limiting the size of assignment areas to 200 total addresses. However, the redesign effort took another approach deciding not to use HHCs in certain large assignment areas. It is not yet clear how this workaround will be carried out. Furthermore, the Bureau will need to define specific and measurable performance requirements for the HHCs as we recommended in January 2005. Another operational issue is the ability of the contractor to accept changes to its address files after it completes address canvassing updates. This could preclude the Bureau from conducting “restart/redo” operations for an area where the address file is discovered to be incorrect. This function is critical in developing an accurate and complete address list. Without the ability to update the mailing list for “restart/redo” operations, the Bureau would consider not mailing census questionnaires to addresses in that area and instead deliver census forms by hand. This has the potential to significantly increase costs. The Bureau still needs to agree upon and finalize requirements for the FDCA program. In March 2006, we reported that the FDCA project office had not implemented the full set of acquisition management capabilities (such as project and acquisition planning and requirements development and management) that were needed to effectively manage the program. For example, although the project office had developed baseline functional requirements for the acquisition, the Bureau had not yet validated and approved them. Subsequently, in October 2007, we reported that changes to requirements had been a contributing factor to both cost increases and schedule delays experienced by the FDCA program. In June 2007, an assessment by an independent contractor of the FDCA program reported on requirements management problems—much like those we reported in March 2006. Similar to our recommendation, the independent assessors recommended that the Bureau immediately stabilize requirements by defining and refining them. The Bureau has recently made efforts to further define requirements for the FDCA program, and it has estimated that the revised requirements will result in significant cost increases. On January 16, 2008, the Bureau provided the FDCA contractor with a list of over 400 requirements for the FDCA program to reconcile. Although some of these new requirements will be dropped based on the Secretary’s recent decision, many will still need to be addressed to ensure that FDCA will perform as needed. Commerce and Bureau officials need to address critical weaknesses in risk management practices. In October 2007, we reported that the FDCA project had weaknesses in identifying risks, establishing adequate mitigation plans, and reporting risk status to executive-level officials. For example, the FDCA project team had not developed mitigation plans that were timely or complete nor did it provide regular briefings on risks to senior executives. The FDCA project team’s failure to report a project’s risks to executive-level officials reduces the visibility of risks to executives who should be playing a role in mitigating them. As of October 2007, in response to the cost and schedule changes, the Bureau decided to delay certain system functionality for FDCA. As a result, the operational testing that was to occur during the dress rehearsal period around May 1, 2008, would not include tests of the full complement of Decennial Census systems and their functionality. Operational testing helps verify that systems function as intended in an operational environment. In late 2007, according to Bureau officials, testing plans for IT systems were to be finalized in February 2008. Therefore, we recommended that the Bureau plan and conduct critical testing, including end-to-end testing of the Decennial Census systems. As of March 2008, the Bureau still had not developed these test plans. In the recent program redesign, the Bureau included conducting end-to-end testing. The inability to perform comprehensive operational testing of all interrelated systems increases the risk that further cost overruns will occur, that decennial systems will experience performance shortfalls, or both. Given the redesigning effort, implementing our recommendations associated with managing the IT acquisitions is as critical as ever. Specifically, the Bureau needs to strengthen its acquisition management capabilities, including finalizing FDCA requirements. Further, it also needs to strengthen its risk management activities, including developing adequate risk mitigation plans for significant risks and improving its executive-level governance of these acquisitions. The Bureau also needs to plan and conduct key tests, including end-to-end testing, to help ensure that decennial systems perform as expected. Even without considering the recent expected cost increases announced by the Bureau to accommodate the redesign of the FDCA program, the Bureau’s cost projections for the 2010 Census revealed an escalating trend from the 1970 Census. As shown in figure 1, the estimated $11.8 billion cost (expressed in constant 2010 dollars) of the 2010 Census, before the FDCA program redesign, represented a more than tenfold increase over the $1 billion spent on the 1970 Census.