The Bureau’s mission is to collect and provide comprehensive data about the nation’s people and economy. Its core activities include conducting decennial, economic, and government censuses; conducting demographic and economic surveys; managing international demographic and socioeconomic databases; providing technical advisory services to foreign governments; and performing other activities such as producing official population estimates and projections. One of the Bureau’s most important functions and largest undertakings is conducting the Decennial Census, which is mandated by the Constitution and provides data that are vital to the nation. The information collected is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives, realign the boundaries of legislative districts, and allocate billions of dollars in federal financial assistance. The Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce and is headed by a Director. It is organized into directorates corresponding to key programmatic and administrative functions, including the IT Directorate led by the Associate Director for IT and Chief Information Officer, and the 2020 Census Directorate, led by the Associate Director for Decennial Census Programs. The Bureau’s October 2015 2020 Census Operational Plan outlines 350 redesign decisions that the Bureau has either made or is planning to make largely by 2018. The Bureau has determined that about 51 percent of the design decisions are either IT-related or partially IT-related (84 IT- related and 94 partially IT-related) and the Bureau reported that, as of April 2016, it had made about 58 percent of these decisions (48 IT-related and 55 partially IT-related). (See fig. 1 below.) Examples of decisions that have been made include the following: Internet response—For the first time on a nationwide scale, the Bureau will allow individuals/households to respond to the census on the Internet from a computer, mobile device, or other devices that access the Internet. Non-ID processing with real-time address matching—The Bureau will provide each household with a unique ID by mail. However, users may also respond to the online survey without the unique ID by entering their address. This operation includes conducting real-time matching of respondent-provided addresses. Non-response follow-up—If a household does not respond to the census by a certain date, the Bureau will send out employees to visit the home. These enumerators will use a census application, on a mobile device provided by the Bureau, to capture the information given to them by the in-person interviews. The Bureau will also manage the case workload of these enumerators using an operational control system that automatically assigns, updates, and monitors cases during non-response follow-up. Administrative records—As we reported in October 2015, the Bureau is working on obtaining and using administrative records from other government agencies, state and local governments, and third- party organizations to reduce the workload of enumerators in their non-response follow-up work. For example, the Bureau plans to use administrative records to identify vacant housing units to remove from enumerators’ workloads, count households that did not return census questionnaires, predict best times to complete non-response follow- up, and help process responses it receives either on paper or over the Internet that do not have a census ID number on them (non-ID processing). Mobile devices—The Bureau plans to award a contract that would provide commercially available mobile phones and the accompanying service contract on behalf of the Census Bureau to enumerators, who will use these devices to collect census data. This approach is referred to as the device-as-a-service strategy. Cloud computing—The Bureau plans to use a hybrid cloud solution where it is feasible, and has decided it will use cloud services for the Internet response option as well as for non-ID processing with real- time address matching. Address canvassing—The Bureau has decided to reengineer its address canvassing process to reduce the need for employing field staff to walk every street in the nation in order to update its address list and maps. For example, the Bureau plans to first conduct in-office address canvassing using aerial imagery, administrative records, and commercial data before sending staff into the field. Figure 2 provides an overview of additional decisions and assumptions for the 2020 Census, resulting from the October 2015 operational plan. Examples of decisions that have not been finalized as of May 2016 include the following. Invalid return detection and non-ID response validation—The Bureau has not decided on its approach for identifying whether fraudulent returns have been submitted for the 2020 Census or the criteria and thresholds to decide whether further investigation may be needed, such as field follow-up. Solutions architecture—While the Bureau has established a notional solutions architecture for the 2020 Census, it has not decided on the final design. Internet response for island areas—The Bureau has not decided on the extent to which the Internet self-response option will be available for island area respondents. Additional uses of cloud—While Bureau officials have decided on select uses of cloud-based solutions, decisions remain on additional possible uses. For example, the Bureau is exploring whether it will use a cloud service provider to support a tool for assigning, controlling, tracking, and managing enumerators’ caseloads in the field. The Bureau’s redesign of the census relies on the acquisition and development of many new and modified systems. Several of the key systems are expected to be provided as CEDCAP enterprise systems under the purview of the IT Directorate. According to Bureau officials, the remaining systems (referred to as non-CEDCAP systems) are to be provided by the 2020 Census Directorate’s IT Division or other Bureau divisions. The 2020 Census Directorate established a Systems Engineering and Integration program office that is to serve as the technical arm of the 2020 Census program and is responsible for ensuring that all the system capabilities needed for the 2020 Census are developed and delivered, including integration of the CEDCAP and non- CEDCAP systems. The CEDCAP program is intended to provide data collection and processing solutions, which include systems, interfaces, platforms and environments, to support the Bureau’s entire survey life cycle, including survey design; instrument development; sample design and implementation; data collection; and data editing, imputation, and estimation. The program consists of 12 projects, which have the potential to offer numerous benefits to the Bureau’s survey programs, including the 2020 Census program, such as enabling an Internet response option; automating the assignment, controlling, and tracking of enumerator caseloads; and enabling a mobile data collection tool for field work. Eleven of these projects are intended to deliver one or more IT solutions. The twelfth project—IT Infrastructure Scale-Up—is not intended to deliver IT capabilities, solutions, or infrastructure; rather, it is expected to provide funding to the other relevant projects to acquire the necessary hardware and infrastructure to enable 2020 Census systems to scale to accommodate the volume of users. Table 1 describes the objectives of each project. The eleven projects are to provide functionality incrementally over the course of 13 product releases. The product releases are intended to support major tests and surveys at the Bureau through 2020. Of the 13 product releases, 7 are intended to support 6 remaining major tests the 2020 Census program is conducting as it prepares for the 2020 Census, as well as 2020 Census live production. The remaining 6 releases support the other surveys such as the ACS and Economic Census. Most recently, the CEDCAP program had been working on delivering the functionality needed for the third product release which was to support a major census test, referred to as the 2016 Census Test—conducted by the 2020 Census program to inform additional decennial design decisions. The 2018 Census End-to-End Test, noted below, is critical to testing all production-level systems and operations in a census-like environment to ensure readiness for the 2020 Census. The 2020 Census program plans to begin this test in August 2017. Figure 3 identifies which of the 13 CEDCAP product releases support the 2020 Census versus other surveys, as of May 2016. Each product release is decomposed into increments which follow a 40- day delivery schedule. Each of these 40-day increments focuses on a subset of functionality to deliver at the end of the increment. The Bureau determined that iterative deliveries of increments of functionality would best suit the CEDCAP program, instead of a “big bang” delivery approach for all solutions across all census and survey operations. Officials reported that such an approach would be impractical given the complexity of the program. To manage this complex program, the CEDCAP Program Management Office consists of three distinct functions: Program Governance, Planning, and Execution: This function is led by the Program Manager and is responsible for strategically leading, integrating, and managing the 12 projects. Business Operations: Led by the Assistant Chief of Business Operations, this function is responsible for project management, risk, issue, schedule, and budget activities. It focuses on the processes that are critical to ensuring seamless integration across projects. Technical Integration: This function is led by the Chief Program Architect, Chief Program Engineer, and Chief Security Engineer, and is responsible for supporting integration and execution of projects, participating in technical reviews, and establishing technical processes related to design, development, testing, integration, and IT security. In addition to the Program Management Office, the Bureau established the Office of Innovation and Implementation to articulate the overall business needs across the enterprise and ensure they are fulfilled by the capabilities to be delivered by CEDCAP. The Office of Innovation and Implementation is responsible for gathering and synthesizing business requirements across the Bureau, including for the 2020 Census Directorate, and delivering them to CEDCAP. Our prior work has identified the importance of having sound management processes in place to help the Bureau as it manages the multimillion dollar investments needed for its decennial census. For the last decennial, we issued multiple reports and testimonies from 2005 through 2010 on weaknesses in the Bureau’s acquisition, management, and testing of key 2010 census IT systems.