In preparation for the 2010 Census, the address canvassing operation was tested as part of the 2008 Dress Rehearsal. From May 7 to June 25, 2007, the Bureau conducted its address canvassing operation for its 2008 Dress Rehearsal in selected localities in California (see fig. 1) and North Carolina (see fig. 2). The 2008 Census Dress Rehearsal took place in San Joaquin County, California, and nine counties in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area. According to the Bureau, the dress rehearsal sites provided a comprehensive environment for demonstrating and refining planned 2010 Census operations and activities, such as the use of HHCs equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS). Prior to Census Day, Bureau listers perform the address canvassing operation, during which they verify the addresses of all housing units. Address canvassing is a field operation to help build a complete and accurate address list. The Bureau’s Master Address File (MAF) is intended to be a complete and current list of all addresses and locations where people live or potentially live. The Topographically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER®) database is a mapping system that identifies all visible geographic features, such as type and location of streets, housing units, rivers, and railroads. Consequently, MAF/TIGER® provides a complete and accurate address list (the cornerstone of a successful census) because it identifies all living quarters that are to receive a census questionnaire and serves as the control mechanism for following up with households that do not respond. If the address list is inaccurate, people can be missed, counted more than once, or included in the wrong location(s). Generally, during address canvassing, census listers go door to door verifying and correcting addresses for all households and street features contained on decennial maps. The address listers add to the 2010 Census address list any additional addresses they find and make other needed corrections to the 2010 Census address list and maps using GPS-equipped HHCs. Listers are instructed to compare what they discover on the ground to what is displayed on their HHC. As part of the 2004 and 2006 Census Tests, the Bureau produced a prototype of the HHC that would allow the Bureau to automate operations, and eliminate the need to print millions of paper questionnaires, address registers, and maps used by temporary listers to conduct address canvassing and non-response follow-up as well as to allow listers to electronically submit their time and expense information. The HHCs for these tests were off-the-shelf computers purchased and programmed by the Bureau. While the Bureau was largely testing the feasibility of using HHCs for collecting data, it encountered a number of technical problems. The following are some of the problems we observed during the 2004and 2006 tests: slowness and frequent lock-up, problems with slow or unsuccessful transmissions, and difficulty in linking a mapspot to addresses for multi-unit structures. For the 2008 Dress Rehearsal and the 2010 Census, the Bureau awarded the development of the hardware and software for a HHC to a contractor. In March 2006, the Bureau awarded a 5-year contract of $595,667,000 to support the FDCA project. The FDCA project includes the development of HHCs, and Bureau officials stated that the HHCs would ultimately increase the efficiency and reduce costs for the 2010 Census. According to the Director of the Census Bureau, the FDCA program was designed to supply the information technology infrastructure, support services, hardware, and software to support a network for almost 500 local offices and for HHCs that will be used across the country. He also indicated that FDCA can be thought of as being made up of three fundamental components: (1) automated data collection using handheld devices to conduct address canvassing, and to collect data during the non-response follow-up of those households that do not return the census form; (2) the Operations Control System (OCS) that tracks and manages decennial census workflow in the field; and (3) census operations infrastructure, which provides office automation and support for regional and local census offices. The 2008 Dress Rehearsal Address Canvassing operation marked the first time the contractor-built HHCs and the operations control system were used in the field. In 2006, we reported that not using the contractor-built HHCs until 2008 Dress Rehearsal Address Canvassing would leave little time to develop, test, and incorporate refinements to the HHCs in preparation for the 2010 Census. We also reported that because the Bureau-developed HHC had performance problems, the introduction of a new HHC added another level of risk to the success of the 2010 Census. For the 2008 Dress Rehearsal, the FDCA contractor developed the hardware and software used in census offices and on the HHCs. See figure 3 for more details. The HHC included several applications that varied depending on the role of the user: software enabling listers to complete their time and expense electronically; text messaging software enabling listers to communicate via text message; software enabling staff to review all work assigned to them and enabling crew leaders to make assignments; software enabling staff to perform address canvassing; and an instrument enabling quality control listers to perform quality assurance tasks. The dress rehearsal address canvassing started May 7, 2007, and ended June 25, 2007, as planned. The Bureau reported in its 2008 Census Dress Rehearsal Address Canvassing Assessment Report being able to use the HHC to collect address information for 98.7 percent of housing units visited and map information for 97.4 percent of the housing units visited. There were 630,334 records extracted from the Bureau’s address and mapping database and sent to the Bureau’s address canvassing operation and 574,606 valid records following the operation. Mapspots (mapping coordinates) were collected for each structure that the Bureau defined as a Housing Unit, Other Living Quarters, or Uninhabitable. Each single- family structure received its own mapspot, while multi-unit structures shared a single mapspot for all the living quarters within that structure. According to the Bureau’s 2008 Dress Rehearsal Address Canvassing Assessment Report, the address canvassing operation successfully collected GPS mapspot coordinates in the appropriate block for approximately 92 percent of valid structures; most of the remaining 8 percent of cases had a manual coordinate that was used as the mapspot. It is not clear whether this represents acceptable performance because the Bureau did not set thresholds as to what it expected during the address canvassing dress rehearsal. Listers experienced multiple problems using the HHCs. For example, we observed and the listers told us that they experienced slow and inconsistent data transmissions from the HHCs to the central data processing center. The listers reported the device was slow to process addresses that were a part of a large assignment area. Bureau staff reported similar problems with the HHCs in observation reports, help desk calls, and debriefing reports. In addition, our analysis of Bureau documentation revealed problems with the HHCs consistent with those we observed in the field: Bureau observation reports revealed that listers most frequently had problems with slow processing of addresses, large assignment areas, and transmission. The help desk call log revealed that listers most frequently reported issues with transmission, the device freezing, mapspotting, and large assignment areas. The Bureau’s debriefing reports illustrated the impact of the HHCs problems on address canvassing. For example, one participant commented that the listers struggled to find solutions to problems and wasted time in replacing the devices. Collectively, the observation reports, help desk calls, debriefing reports, and Motion and Time Study raised serious questions about the performance of the HHCs during the address canvassing operation. The Bureau’s 2008 Dress Rehearsal Address Canvassing Assessment Report cited several problems with HHCs. For example, the Bureau observed the following problems: substantial software delays for assignment areas with over 700 housing substantial software delays when linking mapspots at multi-unit unacceptable help desk response times and insufficient answers, which “severely” affected productivity in the field, and inconsistencies with the operations control system that made management of the operation less efficient and effective. The assessment reported 5,429 address records with completed field work were overwritten during the course of the dress rehearsal address canvassing operation, eliminating the information that had been entered in the field. The Bureau reported that this occurred due to an administrative error that assigned several HHCs the same identification number. Upon discovering the HHC mistake, the FDCA contractor took steps during the dress rehearsal address canvassing operation to ensure that all of the HHC devices deployed for the operation had unique identification numbers. Left uncorrected, this error could have more greatly affected the accuracy of the Bureau’s master address list during dress rehearsal. The HHCs are used in a mobile computing environment where they upload and download data from the data processing centers using a commercial mobile broadband network. The data processing centers housed telecommunications equipment and the central databases, which were used to communicate with the HHCs and manage the address canvassing operation. The HHCs download data, such as address files, from the data processing centers, and upload data, such as completed work and time and expense forms, to the data processing centers. The communications protocols used by the HHCs were similar to those used on cellular phones to browse Web pages on the Internet or to access electronic mail. For HHCs that were out of the coverage area of the commercial mobile broadband network or otherwise unable to connect to the network, a dial- up capability was available to transfer data to the data processing centers.