[House Hearing, 106 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: MAIL-BACK RESPONSE RATES AND STATUS OF KEY OPERATIONS ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ APRIL 5, 2000 __________ Serial No. 106-186 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 70-056 WASHINGTON : 2001 _______________________________________________________________________ For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois DOUG OSE, California ------ PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho (Independent) DAVID VITTER, Louisiana Kevin Binger, Staff Director Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director David A. Kass, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian Lisa Smith Arafune, Chief Clerk Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on the Census DAN MILLER, Florida, Chairman THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee ------ ------ Ex Officio DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Jane Cobb, Staff Director Lara Chamberlain, Professional Staff Member Amy Althoff, Professional Staff Member Andrew Kavaliunas, Clerk Cedric Hendricks, Minority Professional Staff Member C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on April 5, 2000.................................... 1 Statement of: Mihm, J. Christopher, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by Robert N. Goldenkoff and Mark Bird, U.S. General Accounting Office............................. 58 Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census, accompanied by John Thompson, Marvin Raines, and Bill Barron, U.S. Bureau of the Census.......................... 28 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, prepared statement of............... 10 Mihm, J. Christopher, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office: Letter dated June 7, 2000................................ 81 Prepared statement of.................................... 61 Miller, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, prepared statement of.......................... 5 Prewitt, Kenneth, Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census, prepared statement of...................................... 33 OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: MAIL-BACK RESPONSE RATES AND STATUS OF KEY OPERATIONS ---------- WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2000 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the Census, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Miller (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, Maloney, and Davis of Illinois. Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Chip Walker, communications director; Lara Chamberlain and Amy Althoff, professional staff members; Andrew Kavaliunas, clerk; Michelle Ash, minority counsel; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa and Earley Green, minority assistant clerks. Mr. Miller. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, the subcommittee will come to order. There will be a vote in a short period of time, but at least we can get started with our opening statements. Today we continue our series of oversight hearings into the 2000 census. Coming before the subcommittee today will be Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, Director of the Bureau of the Census, and Christopher Mihm, Acting Associate Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office. Before I go further, I would like to say to everyone listening or watching this hearing that if you haven't mailed in your census form, long or short, please take the time to fill it out and mail it back. The census can't be a success without your participation. The money needed to ensure that you have the roads, emergency services, day care, schools and other vital services are tied directly to the responses you give on your census questionnaire. If you don't have a questionnaire or are concerned that you might be missed, you can call the Census Bureau's telephone questionnaire assistance line for help. That number is 1-800- 471-9424. Let me repeat that, 1-800-471-9424. If you have already mailed in your form, thank you for doing your part to ensure that America is accurately counted. I've read Director Prewitt's testimony, and I must say that I am very impressed by the complexity of the current ongoing operations. For example, the Bureau deserves praise for the mail response Web site now available at www.census.gov. The ability for virtually any city or county to look and see their response rates daily, what it was in 1990, and how it compares to the national average is an important addition to this census. Today, there are a number of different issues that I would like to address: The ongoing recruiting efforts as we approach the most difficult stage of the full enumeration, the nonresponse followup, which will be the most demanding task facing the Bureau in the full enumeration; the current mail response rate, on which the success of the census hangs; and then the ongoing controversy regarding the long form questionnaire. Clearly the biggest controversy surrounding the census has been the perceived intrusiveness and the invasion of privacy of the long form. In 1998, the Census Bureau distributed this binder with the long form questions and explanations to all Members of Congress and the Senate and asked for comments. Few comments were received. Clearly, Members did not know at that time what the level of dissatisfaction would be just a mere 2 years later. However, from the moment census forms were being received, it was clear that this was the No. 1 complaint received by the subcommittee. While the long form has always been less popular than the short form, the attitudes toward the 2000 long form seem to be particularly intense despite the fact that it is the shortest ever and only differs by one new question from 1990. During the 1998 dress rehearsals, the long form response rate was between 10 and 15 percentage points lower than the short form. However, this information was not provided to the Congress until June 1999, after the questionnaire had been approved. From the first day that the forms were being received at millions of homes around the Nation, Members of Congress were receiving phone calls from constituents who were very upset about the long form. While some in Congress tried to downplay the extent of the problem, it was clear to me that this would be the biggest issue next to sampling that we would have to deal with in this census. Every major newspaper in the Nation has written about the long form and the privacy issue. Electronic media from talk radio to television have weighed in. It would be a mistake or a callous political move to lay the blame for this controversy at the feet of Republicans. This Republican Congress has been nothing but committed to the census. Republicans have said from the start that the Census Bureau would get the resources it needed to conduct a fair and accurate census. Republicans have kept that promise. In fact, numerous Members have promoted the census in their districts in a number of different ways, including Census in the Schools events and public service announcements like the sample you will see now. [Videotape played.] Mr. Miller. The reason why there is a long form controversy is because millions of Americans aren't comfortable answering the questions, and while some are quick to wag their political finger, more thoughtful consideration on this topic will be more constructive. Long before remarks by any congressional leaders, news stories were talking about the long form problems. The News Hour on PBS had an entire segment on the privacy issue and the long form almost 2 weeks ago. On 60 Minutes, one of the most popular news shows on television with almost 13 million viewers weekly, commentator Andy Rooney voiced to the Nation two Sundays ago his criticism of the long form. He concluded his commentary by saying, ``I am not going to fill out the long form. I'll send them about what a soldier has to give if he's captured in a war: my name, address and Social Security number. Otherwise, Census Bureau, count me out.'' In my hometown in Bradenton, FL, my wife and I live next to an elderly woman in her eighties. She has trouble with her eyesight, so my wife assisted her in filling out her census form. There were several questions that she simply would not answer, including giving her phone number. She noted to my wife that Florida was a State that at one time sold its driver's license list, and she simply was not going to give her phone number to the Federal Government. And while we all know that the census operates in a confidential environment, I believe we must all realize that it is exceptionally difficult for government to separate its entities. A violation of privacy on the State or local level, in people's minds, translates to all levels of government, including the Federal level. To the average person, government is government. Another factor at work here is computer technology and the Internet age. While both have brought tremendous convenience to our lives, grown our economy and fundamentally changed the way Americans live, they each have also brought new privacy concerns. While our government reaps the benefits of our technological prosperity, government must also share the burden of new privacy concerns. I also believe, sadly, that some of the recent scandals involving this administration, particularly the misuse of the FBI files, have not helped in building America's trust in her government. And while no single cause may be blamed, clearly there has been a change in attitudes toward trust in government since the 1990 census. Unfortunately, the 2000 census is feeling some of the brunt of this distrust. So what does this all mean? What should people do who have that long form sitting on their coffee table or kitchen counter? To put it simply, fill it out and mail it in. Congress has heard the dissatisfaction with the long form loud and clear. However, to change our approach in the middle of the census is impossible. In the coming months, my committee will hold hearings on the long form and privacy issues. All sides will have an opportunity to come to the table and be heard. This includes privacy advocates who believe the information is not needed and government data users who say the information is indispensable. I must say, however, that this Congress will look to eliminate the long form for the 2010 census. Of course, we can't eliminate the long form in a vacuum. There is information that government needs to make informed decisions on the allocation of resources and the planning and distribution of $185 billion in funding. A new tool called the American community survey is being developed by the Census Bureau. Is that the answer? Maybe. This is going to take careful consideration by this subcommittee and eventually the Congress as a whole. What is clear is that Republicans and Democrats must both work to promote the census. If one side or the other attempts to gain political advantage over the other during these critical weeks, then surely participation in the census will be hurt. An inaccurate census hurts America. An accurate census is in everyone's best interest. This is your future. Don't leave it blank. [The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Miller follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.003 Mr. Miller. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to our witnesses, Dr. Prewitt from the Census Bureau and Mr. Mihm from GAO. I've seen so much of you lately, it seems like we are becoming very old friends. April 1, census day, was 4 days ago, and major census operations are now under way. Though the most labor-intensive activities are yet to come, all signs now are good. The largest peacetime mobilization in our history is under way, and I salute Director Prewitt and the census staff for an excellent job to date. Right now, the key success indicator for the census is the mail-back response rate, how many households have mailed back their forms. As of today, that stands at 55 percent, or about 67 million households. That still leaves 45 percent of our Nation's households that have not returned their forms, and I urge everyone who has not mailed their form back to do so today, right now. At 55 percent, however, it seems that the estimated response rate of 61 percent will be met, and I'm hopeful it might be exceeded. The Director has challenged the Nation to reach 70 percent, and I hope and think we might reach that mark. I don't want to sound too optimistic, but the hard work on the advertising campaign, the partnerships, and promotional activities appears to be paying off. Other indicators are positive as well. Recruiting continues to go well, with the Bureau reaching its goal of 2.4 million qualified applicants by March 31, almost 3 weeks ahead of schedule. 25.5 million forms have already been scanned with continued high accuracy. Update/leave operations were successfully completed on schedule, almost 6 million phone calls have gone to the 800 number, and 58,000 forms have been completed on the Internet. The other night, I went out with Chairman Miller at 4 a.m. to watch the temporary employees that the census has hired from the community to count the homeless. It was incredibly impressive to see the dedication and commitment of this work force operating in the middle of the night in difficult and often hazardous areas. So, things are going about as well as could be expected operationally. Considering the doom and gloom of just a few months ago on both the hiring needs and the mail response rate, things are, in fact, going remarkably well. The two major concerns raised by the GAO last December, hiring and response rates, are clearly on track, which makes the recent comments about the long form by senior Republicans all the more unfortunate. Clearly one contingency that GAO could not warn us about are some of the irresponsible remarks that have been in the news lately by elected officials who should know better. Let me make clear I am not referring to the chairman of this subcommittee. He has been a supporter of the census and the long form throughout this latest turmoil. But several prominent Republicans, including Senator Lott, Governor Bush of Texas and J.C. Watts, Chair of the Republican Conference, have recently complained that the long form is too nosy, that it asks too many questions. Some of these individuals have even made public statements suggesting that Americans should not complete their forms, despite the fact that refusing to complete these forms would be a violation of Federal law. I think these comments are outrageous, irresponsible, pandering to fringe groups and the radio talk show circuit. They threaten the success of the census by driving response down. We have Members of Congress saying that they ``believe in voluntarily cooperating'' with the government, but beyond that they won't follow the law. Since when did following the law in this country become a voluntary thing? What is really disingenuous is the fact that most of the questions on the long form have been around for decades. In fact, Ronald Reagan signed off on every single question in the 2000 census during preparations for the 1990 census, except for one required this decade by welfare reform. Over 2 years ago, as the content of the long and short forms was being finalized, every Member of Congress received this book, a detailed list of the questions to be asked, including a description of the need for asking it, along with the specific legal requirements supporting it. So this controversy, at this late date, strikes some as intentional sabotage. At the very least it is willful disregard for a successful census. While it may not be intentional, it clearly shows an ignorance of how incredibly useful census data is, and how much of a difference it makes in the lives of millions of Americans. Let's look at the plumbing question the talk radio shows seem to focus on. Well, it may shock some, but there are places in this country where Americans don't have plumbing, in the Colonias in Texas, on Indian reservations, and I daresay probably in rural communities in Mississippi. Or let's look at question 17 concerning a person's physical, mental or emotional condition in the last 6 months. Are some Members saying they don't want to know how big a problem this is, how many disabled Americans there are in this country, how many disabled vets, and where there are high concentrations of them who need services? It is my understanding that some of these leaders have started to moderate their comments. Well, they shouldn't just moderate their comments, they should be in the forefront of urging all Americans to fill out their forms completely. They should be urging their members to join them in supporting the census, all of the census. Anything less is unacceptable. Unless they move quickly to fully support the census, we run the risk of irreparable harm. And frankly, I am not only worried about the problems presented in response rates by this controversy. I'm also concerned about the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who will be going door to door in their neighborhoods in the coming weeks. So today I am happy to hear things are going well. I sincerely hope they will continue to go well, despite the impact of this controversy over the long form. I look forward to hearing from Dr. Prewitt today on how he thinks this controversy will impact the census effort. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.017 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.020 Mr. Miller. I am sure that you are pleased to see the public service announcement that Senator Lott and Representative Thompson put together to encourage Mississippians to complete their form. Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn't planning on doing an opening statement, but given the controversy and discussion over the long form, it is prudent to make some suggestions. I am doing a PSA for the State of Wisconsin with my Democratic colleague from Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, urging everyone to fill out all of their census forms. I agree with you that, and as a person who believes in limited government, I think it is very important that you fill out the census forms. You heard a lot about this on talk radio, and a lot of letters that I am getting in my office are, ``why do they want to know so much about me?'' A lot of the talk radio hosts--and I think it is a simplistic, but interesting way of looking at it--say, ``if you want the government to do everything, then they need to know everything about you.'' That is the simple thing, and we are hearing that throughout the country today. We are hearing it more in the year 2000 than in 1990, I think, because there are more legitimate privacy concerns related to the technology that we have in this country today. E-commerce, the Internet, these things I think are symptomatic of the new technologies that are emerging in our economy and our society that are cause for a rise in personal privacy concerns. So I am not sure that this is all some kind of asperity against our government, but more a general concern about privacy rights that is rising throughout the entire country. These are basically the same questions that we had in 1990. It is a different country now in the year 2000, but I hope we can get through this and learn some lessons on the long form. Now that we are in the information age, hopefully we can take some lessons from this long form issue on a bipartisan basis and work forward to make sure that the next census addresses these privacy concerns. I think it is important that everyone fills out every part of the questionnaire. I look forward to hearing your testimony. In Wisconsin we had a 59 percent initial response rate, and we are proud of that. The reports are showing that you are on your way. Mr. Miller. You had to bring up that they beat Florida, didn't you? Mr. Ryan. Yes, sorry. Mr. Miller. If you would stand, Dr. Prewitt, and the three senior staff members with you, Mr. John Thompson, Mr. Marvin Raines, and Mr. Bill Barron, will also be sworn in case they are needed to answer questions. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Miller. For the record, all four answered in the affirmative. Director Prewitt, would you proceed with an opening statement. STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR, U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN THOMPSON, MARVIN RAINES, AND BILL BARRON, U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS Mr. Prewitt. If I may preference my opening statement with a statement of sympathy for the unhappy evening that you spent Monday night. Mr. Miller. At least we made it into the finals. Mrs. Maloney. I thought you were talking about our homeless count night. Mr. Miller. The Florida Gators. Mr. Prewitt. Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney and members of the committee, when I last testified, the focus was on whether the Census Bureau could pull off the many complex and massive operations--all of these operations were conducted successfully with no major problems that would put the census at risk. In your letter of invitation, you ask for the status of nationwide mail response rates and what those rates translate into for the nonresponse followup [NRFU], workload, hiring and other operations, and associated costs. As of this writing, the national mail response rate as posted on the Internet is 55 percent. In a few hours, we will update it to 57 percent. It does not reflect what we expect to be an April 1 effect. We are not yet certain, but we are cautiously optimistic that we will achieve the 61 percent on which we based our budgeting and staffing program. April 11 is the cutoff date for identifying housing units that have not mailed back a questionnaire so we can include them in the nonresponse followup workload. We will continue to process mail returns after that date. On April 17, we will produce a late mail return file that we will transmit to the Local Census Offices so they can delete those addresses from their nonresponse followup assignments. You asked, sir, for an update on the status and a brief overview of the census 2000 operational time line, and readiness for key activities and dates that lay ahead. On many of these issues, the GAO will be testifying, and thus I will be very brief. We began and completed the update/leave operation as planned. Telephone questionnaire assistance centers also began on March 3 and will run through June 8, and outbound calling from the TQA sites as part of our coverage edit program will continue into mid-June. We have answered nearly 6 million calls. Just over 4 percent of those calls were unable to get through; almost all of those were on the first 2 days. There were also some early problems in validating the questionnaire data that was taken over the telephone. These problems have now been resolved. The advance letter provided an opportunity for those who want a language form. We have received about 2.5 million such requests. In the mail out/mail back areas of the country there were some households that received duplicate questionnaires. This occurred because during all of the overlapping processes used to build the master address file, we wanted to minimize the chance that we would eliminate an address that should be retained. We have procedures in place to eventually remove these duplicate addresses from our files before the final census data are tabulated. Enumerators are visiting about half a million housing units in list/enumerate areas, an operation similar to that initiated in Alaska on January 19. Last week, we completed the Service-Based Enumeration. Census enumerators interviewed people in shelters, at soup kitchens, mobile food van stops and at targeted outdoor locations. We enumerated about 22,000 such places over the course of the 3 days. We have initiated the transient night operation, which will extend until April 14 for a few very large and relatively stable locations. We have initiated, and will continue through May 6, the count of about 7 million people in about 125,000 special places during group quarters enumeration--college and university dormitories, hospital and prison wards, migrant farm camps and nursing homes. We are on schedule with regard to the enumeration of land-based and shipboard military personnel and people aboard U.S. flag-bearing merchant vessels, about 1,000 ships and over 500 military reservations in all. In your letter of invitation, you asked about the status of data capture systems for all four sites. Data capture is working very well. We have scanned about 24 million forms, and scanning accuracy is exceeding expectations. We have received nearly 60,000 responses through the Internet. Questionnaire Assistance Centers opened on March 8 and will be open through April 14. To maximize use of staff, we have eliminated redundant sites and currently have 24,000 in operation. Be Counted Forms became available on March 31 at approximately 19,000 sites in addition to the QACs, where they are also available. Your letter also asked about any difficulties confronting Local Census Offices. None of the 520 LCOs is experiencing problems that have prevented normal operations. Some LCOs are reporting minor problems with their telephone systems, and headquarters staff are working closely with the General Services Administration and telecommunications service providers to resolve the problems. At present, all systems are up and running. Nonresponse followup [NRFU], is scheduled to begin April 27. Enumerator training begins April 24, and NFRU will continue for 10 weeks until the first week of July. Extending NRFU beyond that date would not only increase census costs, it could lead to a reduction in data quality. Experience teaches us that the longer we are in the field, and the farther we get from census day, the more the quality of respondents' answers deteriorates. We will stay in the field until we have exhausted all of our established procedures. You asked about the status of the hiring process for NRFU. While we have met our national goal of having 2.4 million qualified applicants well in advance of our April 19 target date, we are continuing to accept applications and to actively recruit in local areas where we have not yet met our recruiting goals. I would now like to describe in some detail the enumerator's job and our procedures for assuring the quality and completeness of their work. Each NRFU enumerator is assigned a specific area in which to work, called an assignment area, and is given a binder of addresses in that area that includes all those addresses for which we have not received a completed questionnaire, and in rural areas enumerators also receive maps that have the housing units' locations spotted on them. If the current household lived at the address on census day, the enumerator interviews a household member at least 15 years of age and completes the assigned questionnaire. If the unit was occupied by a different household on census day, the enumerator completes a questionnaire for the occupants who lived there on census day by interviewing a knowledgeable person, such as a neighbor. If the current occupants were not enumerated elsewhere, the enumerator will also complete a census questionnaire for them at their census day address. If the housing unit was vacant on census day, the enumerator completes appropriate housing questions on the questionnaire by interviewing a knowledgeable person, such as an apartment house manager. The enumerator must make up to six attempts to complete a questionnaire. If no one is home at a housing unit, the enumerator obtains as much information as possible about how to contact the occupants. The enumerator leaves a notice at the address that they have been visited and provides a telephone number so the occupant can call back. He will make up to two additional personal visits, three in all, and three telephone attempts at contacting the household before obtaining as much information as possible to complete the questionnaire from a knowledgeable source. Enumerators are instructed to make their callbacks on different days and at different times of the day. They must obtain at least the status, occupied or vacant, and the number of people living in the unit. If an enumerator submits a questionnaire which contains that minimal level of data, the crew leader must check the enumerator's record of callbacks for the housing unit to determine that procedures were properly followed. The crew leader also holds these cases for possible further followup to obtain more complete data. In order to prevent falsification of the data by enumerators, a percentage of each enumerator's work is verified for accuracy by staff. An enumerator who is discovered falsifying data is dismissed immediately, and all the work must be redone by another enumerator. Daily production levels begin to decrease during the end of NRFU. Sometime enumerators complete the easiest cases first, finish the work closest to their homes first, or believe that the quicker that they finish, the sooner they would be out of work. In order to bring the NRFU to closure within schedule, we implement a procedure known as ``final attempt.'' Within the area covered by a crew leader, approximately 2,200 cases, when that area has completed 95 percent of its workload, the crew leader consolidates the remaining work and gives it to the most productive and dependable enumerators. They make one final visit to each outstanding address and do some of the housing units for which only minimal data was collected to complete as much of the questionnaire as possible. This procedure takes advantage of our best enumerators and will improve both the count and the data quality. Final attempt must resolve all outstanding cases. NRFU is not over until every procedure has been completed, and this, of course, includes the check-in of every census form. Let me then turn quickly to the long form issue. Mr. Chairman, I pledged to you and this subcommittee several meetings ago that I would bring to your attention any development which could put the census at risk. Nothing in our current operations poses such a risk, but the widespread attack on the long form could have serious consequences. Indeed, I alerted you to this in our phone conversation early last week. First a few background comments. Concern with overburdening respondents with too many questions led the Census Bureau to introduce a long form on a sample basis in the 1940 census. We have used this approach in each decennial census since. The selection of a sample based on established scientific methods means that not everyone is asked every question. The majority receive only the short form. The census 2000 long form is the shortest in history. The law requires that 3 years prior to census day, the Census Bureau report to Congress the subjects proposed for inclusion in the census. The Census Bureau reported this information to Congress in a letter accompanying materials dated March 28, 1997. The law also requires that we report to Congress the specific questions we intend to ask 2 years prior. We did that March 30, 1998. The materials that we submitted to Congress described each question we included on the long form and, more importantly, provided detailed legal citations that indicate each item is mandated or required by congressional legislation or Federal judicial decisions in the book that the ranking member and indeed you referenced as well. Accurate census data provide the underpinnings for other Federal surveys and data collections. The decennial census forms a sampling base for other national surveys and is used to compute rates of various indicators. Therefore, it is directly linked to the statistical system's ability to provide current unemployment data, to provide data for making cost-of-living adjustments, to calculate numerous vital statistics and rates for health services, to calculate crime and victimization rates and the like. I now bring the subcommittee up to date regarding our concerns about the fate of long form data in the current census environment. Some of the information I now have available is so recent that I could not include it in the written testimony submitted earlier this week. The current differential response rate between the short and long form household is approximately double the 1990 rate. This differential may close, and we are doing everything we can to assure the American people that long form data are important and confidential. Every 5 percent differential in the response rate between the two forms translates into a 1 percent reduction in the overall response rate. In other words, if a differential today were what it was in 1990, the overall national response rate would be a percentage point higher. If the lower than expected response to the long form persists, there will be operational and budgetary implications. It takes more time to enumerate a long form. A lower than expected response rate will, consequently, place an unanticipated burden on the nonresponse followup phase of the census. Moreover, given the public atmosphere that has trivialized and discredited the long form, we have to be concerned about the morale of the field staff who will now be trying to get information that many public voices, including a few Members of Congress, are saying should be voluntary. We have to be prepared for higher than expected turnover, especially in rural areas with the higher than average number of long forms. Given the public commentary, there is also the possibility that we will have a higher than expected item nonresponse on the long form. This could have serious consequences for a decade. The Census Bureau has high quality standards. It would not release data that it believed were insufficiently reliable to perform the functions expected of them. This has never happened with census data, but it has with certain survey information. If the two issues just mentioned--high nonresponse to the long form and high noncompliance with particular items on the forms returned--combine to push data below our quality threshold, the Census Bureau would be placed in a very difficult position of deciding what to release. Mr. Chairman, I know you are concerned about whether the ACE will provide the quality of data required to adjust for the undercount. At a public session organized by the National Academy of Sciences, I said if the ACE effort did not meet Census Bureau quality standards, it would not be used. This holds for all Census Bureau efforts. If, for instance, the income data were to fall below our quality threshold and we could not release it, more than two dozen statutory uses ranging from the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to the Business and Industry Guarantee Loan Program of 1980 to title I funds and Head Start programs would be affected. So also would be the calculation of the Consumer Price Index and the unemployment rate for the next decade. You, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member and Mr. Ryan and Mr. Davis have made strong statements about the importance of the long form data, but now I urge you to ask the entire U.S. Congress to step forward and explain to the American people why the Congress has required, authorized and paid for the collection of these long form data. There were no viable alternatives to having a long form for census 2000. No other data source could provide all the information that a Nation needs in a cost-effective manner. In the long term, we hope that the American community survey will replace the long form, and indeed by 2010. The ACS scheduled for nationwide implementation in 2003 is one of the most important improvements in Federal statistics, and it is the cornerstone of our efforts to keep pace for timely and relevant data. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.030 Mr. Miller. We have two votes coming up, and so I think we should be back in about 15 minutes. We stand in recess. I ask my colleagues to come back as soon as we can, and we will proceed. [Recess.] Mr. Miller. We will reconvene the subcommittee. Let me start off with some questions on the long form. What is the difference in response rates in 1990 between the long form and short form, and also in the dress rehearsal? Mr. Prewitt. The long form/short form differential in 1990 at the end of the census was 4.5 percent, but at the end of mail out/mail back, it was about 6 percent. The reason that converged slightly, when we went out in the field, we were able to convert a higher percentage of the long from nonrespondents than the short form nonrespondents, so we closed the gap in 1990. Your numbers that I just saw in your testimony on the dress rehearsal ranged from 10 to 15 percent. Mr. Miller. It was Sacramento, and I don't think---- Mr. Prewitt. Sacramento and South Carolina. Sacramento was 14.7--12 percent, and South--that's South Carolina. I'm sorry, the reason that it is complicated, we calculated both the mail out/mail back and update/leave area. So the update/leave area was 13 percent. The mail out/mail back area was 11 percent for South Carolina. The differential in Sacramento for mail out/mail back was 15, and in Menomenee was 8. That was all update/leave. Those are the numbers. Mr. Miller. So the dress rehearsal gave us an indication of a problem which we just found out about a year ago, and at that time it was too late to respond to it as much. What steps did the Bureau take? Mr. Prewitt. I would say that there are certain things the dress rehearsal gives you a clue on. As you know, the overall turnout response rate in dress rehearsal was low. It doesn't predict everything. It is an opportunity for us to test operations. We don't expect the response patterns in a dress rehearsal to look like the overall response rates. We would not ourselves have concluded that that differential was very predictive. We thought the strongest predictor of large-scale patterns is the 1990 pattern. Indeed, one of the most interesting things is that the overall response rate in 1990 compared to 1980 tracks almost perfectly across the 50 States. It is just that everybody dropped 10 percent. It is not that some States dropped 20 and some States didn't drop at all; all dropped approximately 10 percent across the country. That is the strongest predictor. We based much of our operational predictions on the 1990 response rates for 2000. There are so many things going on in a dress rehearsal. One, they are not typical places of the entire country. Mr. Miller. There was a large differential. You don't think that was significant in both Sacramento or---- Mr. Prewitt. No, we didn't conclude from that we were going to get this kind of differential in 2000, but neither did the subcommittee or GAO. Nobody said, oh, my goodness, at that stage. Mr. Miller. When you scan in the envelopes the bar code tells you whether it is a long or short form. You don't know whether the person completed just the first six questions? Mr. Prewitt. That's correct. We will do serious work on item nonresponse, but we won't have serious data until during the winter of 2001. Mr. Miller. I was talking to a Member of Congress, and he had the long form. He was still completing it. I got the long form, and there are some questions my wife had to fill out because she knew more details. The short form is--obviously anybody can go through it in a couple of minutes and complete it. There could be a delay a little bit, so we will have to see what it is. Mr. Prewitt. We very much hope that there is a delay, and we hope that people are sitting with the long form waiting and that this converges. If you do the arithmetic, there aren't that many forms left out there that we expect to get back in the mail. At a certain point you begin to get a real tailing off. We are hoping that this weekend--we are doing a lot of heavy advertising. It is certainly possible, as you suggest, Mr. Miller, that more long forms are sitting on those kitchen counters, and we will get a disproportionate number of long forms at the tail end. And we will be happy if that turns out to be the case, but we will know that roughly a week from today. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Prewitt, I think the controversy of the long form that has surfaced has been quite harmful to your efforts. What do you think is the impact on the response rate because of these comments by elected officials? Mr. Prewitt. I honestly believe that it is very difficult for large parts of the American public to draw the kind of fine distinctions that are sometimes suggested in public commentary. I appreciate that all responsible leaders are saying it is important to be counted; therefore, send your form in even if you don't fill it all out. But how that translates in the public consciousness, especially since we are now dealing--we have all got to remember, we are now dealing with the tail end of the mail-back response period. That is, the most alert and responsible and committed members of society have probably sent forms back in. So we are now dealing with people who are less motivated or less attuned and paying less attention. What they may hear vibrating in the atmosphere is, ``oh, well, the information is not that important after all.'' That is what has us worried. Mrs. Maloney. What are you doing to counter this unfortunate attitude? Do you have any plans to specifically respond to the unfortunate comments of Senator Lott and Governor Bush? Mr. Prewitt. I have done everything that I can in the media to repeat that the long form questions are all there because the U.S. Congress wants them; that they all perform these important functions, as you have all testified and said in your own PSAs; and that all we can do is simply repeat that. We are doing a lot of targeted advertising, video news feeds. I do about 10 or 15 a day where we think that we might be able to get a bit of visibility on this. We are accelerating our targeted radio advertising right now, but--it is very late in the game to try to use an advertising campaign to counter the mind-set or the public impression that has been generated by--and I think as the chairman says quite correctly--a quite extensive attention to this issue among talk shows and other public commentators. When I say that, I certainly don't mean at all to exclude any of the larger--the newspaper editors and so forth are all part of that commentary. All we can do at this stage is push hard in the last 3 or 4 or 5 days. If I can say one other word, I think it is going to be extremely important when the mail-out/mail-back period is finished, which is, after all, less than a week, to regroup on this and try to get a message out, because the nonresponse followup period, we are going to have a lot of temporary employees, they are Americans trying to count America, and they are going to be out in the field knocking on doors, and it is very important to have an atmosphere at the time that this census matters, that this is serious business, and that this is not trivial or incidental or voluntary. So I am very much hopeful that we will be able to, with your help, enlist the U.S. Congress on that behalf, and other members of the U.S. Government, to say--we may have another 40 to 45 million households. So we have another shot at trying to make a major message, but we will not be able to do that through an advertising campaign. We will have to do that with the kind of PSAs you just saw, and I hope they will stress the importance of these data and to cooperate with the enumerators. Mrs. Maloney. I must say that I have collected well over 30 editorials across the country really calling upon everyone to fill out their forms, the long form, and not to listen to any elected official who may be advocating otherwise or referring to the census long form as optional. It occurs to me that the problem may surface after the mail-back, but in the nonresponse followup. It may be more of a problem there. At what point do you send an enumerator out, once you have the long form? Do all of the questions have to be answered? What is the decision if they do just selectively answer; do you send out an enumerator? What is the procedure in that case? Mr. Prewitt. No, if we get a long form in that has any information whatsoever that allows us to consider it a legitimate response, then we cannot send an enumerator out to try to get the additional information. That is why I say item nonresponse is a very serious issue, but we don't have a good measure. It could be three questions left blank, or it could be 52 questions that were left blank. We certainly have to have some information. For example, we cannot take a form that says there are 99 people living here and then nothing else. We can't accept that form on behalf of the U.S. Government. We would have to somehow find out if there were really people living there. So there are certain thresholds below which we cannot accept the form, and you wouldn't want us to. It would be an alert to us that perhaps this is a fraudulent count. So we have to get enough information to know that somebody actually lives there, that this is a residence, it is an inhabited residence, and enough information about an individual to be able to say this is a person or else we can't put them in the count. We certainly don't have the resources to go out and now convert a lot of empty responses on the long form into full data. That is not part of the census operational plan. Mr. Miller. Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan. Dr. Prewitt, you said that the nonresponse followup for the long form is twice what it was for 1990 at this time? Mr. Prewitt. At this time. Mr. Ryan. Why do you think that is, aside from comments here and there? Mr. Prewitt. Look, I am trying to actually get some information on this, and I can speculate the way that you can speculate. I think you are right, Congressman Ryan, that this country has a heightened sense of privacy concerns, and that spills over into the government. I can tell you based upon some survey data that the proportion of the American public who was telling us that the census data are invasive jumped by 7 percent from--from week 2 of the census to week 3, and in between that period of time, that is when this campaign started. So I can only infer from that that it is having some effect. Does that translate into nonresponse? I can't tell you that yet. Mr. Ryan. I think it was a Houston judge that filed an injunction against the imposition of a fine for those who may not fill out all of their long form. What is your reaction to that? In 1990, did the Census Bureau impose a $100 fine on people who didn't fill every bit of their long form questionnaire? What is your take on the injunction? Mr. Prewitt. The last case that was enforced on noncompliance with the census was in 1960. Mr. Rickenbacker. The fine was imposed. It was upheld by the courts. The Census Bureau itself is not an enforcement agency and would never enforce any of these. We are a statistical agency. But it has not been our recommendation that enforcement action take place. My own concern on that would be that that would create more noise, more fuel, and I would worry that it would have a damaging effect on the census. By the way, the $100 which has been mentioned in the press, and indeed we have mentioned it ourselves, I want to correct the record, it turns out to be up to $5,000. The standard Criminal Act of 1984 trumps all other acts. It is title 18, I believe, and unless you explicitly exclude some Federal infraction from the law of title 18, the fine is actually up to $5,000. Mr. Ryan. I thought it was $5,000 if a government employee misuses the census data or accesses it improperly. Mr. Prewitt. That is a separate issue. Mr. Ryan. So the fine is actually $5,000? Mr. Prewitt. Up to. Mr. Ryan. Up to $5,000. Mr. Prewitt. This is the uniform criminal statute passed in 1984 that basically, as I understand it, says that any infraction of a Federal law can be--can elicit a fine up to $5,000. So the particular injunction against the $100 is targeted on title 13 rather than title 18. Mr. Ryan. So the injunction really is meaningless. And an infraction subject to the $5,000 fine could be failure to fill out one or two of the questions on the long form? Mr. Prewitt. Yes. Mr. Ryan. I don't want to create some hysteria on talk radio on this. Hopefully C-SPAN will play that. The Census Bureau--these fines have not been imposed in the past? Mr. Prewitt. Since 1960. Mr. Ryan. They were not imposed in 1970, 1980 and 1990? Mr. Prewitt. I think maybe there was one case in 1970. I am almost certain in 1970 there was a case that was overturned. It was overturned on the grounds that it was selective enforcement. ``Why did you choose that person instead of that person when millions performed the infraction.'' The only one that was upheld was 1960. Mr. Ryan. So the last one was thrown out? Mr. Prewitt. I believe so. But the Census Bureau is not interested in pursuing enforcement action. Mr. Ryan. I understand that it is not in your best interest to broadcast that, because then you encourage people not to fill these out. Boy, that is an intriguing number. As your enumerators are going out--and I know that you addressed this with Mrs. Maloney, but as they are going out and following up for the long form, as they ask questions on the followup for the long form, is there a threshold in the questioning that is acceptable and then not acceptable? Meaning if you find that people are not going to answer a question A, B or C, but they will answer all other questions, is there a threshold in the long form that makes it acceptable census data or unacceptable census data? Has that threshold been established? Mr. Prewitt. There is certainly a minimal threshold. We have to be able to be certain that the number of people we are counting in this household on this block actually live in that household. That is the threshold. Mr. Ryan. So essentially the short form questions and---- Mr. Prewitt. Yes. If we got even a partial short form answer on the long form, the person would still be counted. So we would have huge item nonresponse, but we would not lose the count. And we will do everything we can to get that count correct. Mr. Ryan. Thank you. Mr. Miller. Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Prewitt, I know that there has been and continues to be a tremendous amount of discussion about the long form and the response. I do believe that people begin to feel that it was more invasive as they heard other people suggest that it was invasive. I mean, the power of suggestion is amazing still in this country. And I don't think people were concerned as much about whether or not it was invasive until they began to hear public figures suggest that maybe it was, or they saw some columnist suggest that maybe it was. They pick it up and say, ``yes, I guess it really is,'' when they look at it. Let me just ask you, let's say that I am one of these individuals who want to participate in the count, and I don't have any real difficulty giving the basic information, but I, too, have been convinced, if I was that person--and I received the long form, and I was not convinced--I did half, and my wife did the other half, and then there might have been a question or two and we threw up a coin to decide which one of us would answer that one, and it was done. A lot of fun. But let's say that I am not convinced that the information is necessary, and that I can participate without providing this information. Is there something that one might be able to suggest or convey to the average citizen that it is important to do the long form if that is what they got? Mr. Prewitt. Well, Congressman Davis, I think that the message is roughly the message that we have been trying to promote now for 6 months, which is an awful lot of government programs, provide benefits to your community, if you see those ads about schools, and you see those ads about transportation, or you see those ads about day care centers, if you make any kind of connection, you connect that to long form data, because all of the social programs use the kind of data about age, about veteran status, about poverty, about traffic congestion, about water pollution, based on long form data to provide those services. I would hope that when you are sitting there at the table and saying, I know this is something that I don't want to do, but I have just heard that all of these benefits will come to my community, you will make that sort of logical step. But at this stage what we will have to do--because if we do have a higher than expected nonresponse to the long form, we will now have to try to get the enumerators--and this is not easy. You are trying to train half a million temporary workers to enumerate people who are angry at you, indifferent, hostile toward you and get that full information. We will have to rely on that army of people. We will have to get them to understand the importance of this. This will not recapture the data that has already come in, but is incompletely filled out. There is no way to recapture that data at this stage. Mr. Davis of Illinois. Are you saying that this is information that can be used for planning purposes to help make specific determinations about what is needed in certain communities or what might be needed overall for the country as a whole? Mr. Prewitt. Well, yes, sir. To put this as strongly as I can, I think the commentators thus far are overlooking the fact that the Consumer Price Index, the unemployment rates are tracked with data that in turn are dependent upon quality information that you get from the decennial, and we are putting at risk the way that we conduct our basic economic statistics in this country. This is very serious stuff. Mr. Davis of Illinois. Would you also say that there is no better way or no other time at which we could expect to get this information in such a massive way? Mr. Prewitt. There certainly is no way in the year 2000. There is no agency other than the Census Bureau that can collect this kind of information. We cannot suddenly decide let's find somebody else to collect long form data for the country. The best we could offer the country, and it is not trivial, is that if we were to--the chairman in his opening remarks said he does not expect to be doing the long form data ever again, holding out the possibility that we will be able to launch the American community survey. We are currently scheduled to launch that in 2003. We could actually accelerate that by a year. We could start the American community survey a year earlier if the Congress instructed us. If they told us to start planning to be in the field by 2002 with the American community survey, I believe we could do that. Mr. Davis of Illinois. I know that Illinois' initial response rate is 56 percent, but I am told that my city is significantly lower than that. Would you have any suggestions at this late date for those places that are coming in below the national norm? Mr. Prewitt. The most important figure to watch right now is how far below your own performance in 1990 you are. In Chicago you are about 13 percent below your 1990 performance. That is not that far off from the national number. The national number is about 10 percent. Even though you are well below the national average, the most important thing is to measure yourself against 1990. So the most important message to get to the people of Chicago is let's accomplish what we accomplished in 1990. Worry about what we were in 1990 and how we can get there. It is not too late to send the form in. We are now doing video news feeds to Chicago saying it is not too late, it is not too late. Mail it back now if you still have it. I think the more we can get that message out over the next 2 or 3 days, the better off the census will be. Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you. I am so pleased I have a bunch of volunteers who are also going out this weekend simply knocking on doors and asking people to send their forms in. Mr. Prewitt. Good, good, good. Mr. Miller. Director Prewitt, I have been urging people to complete all of the questions because we recognize how critical it is for our area. Sarasota is undercounted, and it hurts; Chicago or New York City. So it really is a personal thing that we need to do. When Mr. Ryan was asking the question about why people are not responding, you referred to some poll that said it is really because of some comments of Andy Rooney or politicians or all of the talk show people. There are legitimate concerns about privacy that are probably different today than 10 years ago, whether it is medical privacy--financial privacy is always a subject that we are concerned with, and we have legitimate concerns. I mentioned in my opening statement a problem with the abuse of driver's license lists in Florida. They were selling photographs even in Florida, so people are more suspect of government. So it is not just these comments. There are differences in society. Mr. Prewitt. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I don't want to back away from that. What I have said publicly and repeat strongly today, I think this country is on a collision course between its insatiable desire for information and its heightened concern for privacy, and the Census Bureau is caught between those two needs. As I said yesterday publicly to the press, we are creating a knowledge economy, and the infrastructure for a knowledge economy is information. And the decennial base helps create a higher quality information infrastructure for this society, and the society on the one hand wants that, and on the other hand we have these deep concerns about privacy. All I was suggesting by the poll data, and I don't want to put too much emphasis on poll data, but in a week--it wasn't that it wasn't already there, it was, but it jumped in 1 week that the census data are invasive, and it happened to be the week that this became a public discussion. That is a fact. I don't want to overinterpret it. Mr. Miller. I think if we polled it today compared to 10 years ago, it would be higher. We are in an information technology era, and it raises these concerns. After we get through these critical phases, we are going to discuss how to handle the 2010 census. If someone refuses to answer the income question, and you get asked this question, what do you tell someone? You tell them basically--what do you tell someone who says, I am not going to put down how much my electric bill is? Mr. Prewitt. One on one with a respondent, I would say, look, give us an estimate, create a range, give us the best information that you are prepared to give us. Here are the kind of ways that this information is used. As I just said, over two dozen pieces of important Federal legislation use some--the income data one way or the other. So the array of programs that use these data is enormous. But it is also used to drive the sample frame and the statistical controls for the CPI and unemployment data. All of our pension systems are indexed to the CPI. The Social Security is indexed to the CPI. The stakes are very high. That is what I would try to explain. If they persisted in refusing, I would prefer to get their information, whatever I could get from them. The most important thing--and I don't underestimate this--the most important thing is a good count. Our constitutional obligation is to count the population for purposes of apportionment and redistricting. We take that as our foremost priority task; and the other benefits that come from the long form are simply not as high a priority. So we will do everything we can to count everyone and make sure that we don't count anyone twice and that we have no fraudulent responses. That is our first task. Mr. Miller. You are not an enforcement agency, as you said to Mr. Ryan? You are not an enforcement agency? Mr. Prewitt. We are not going to tell our enumerators to wave fines in front of these people. We did put on the envelope that it is required by law. We wanted to make sure that this does not look like junk mail. We were worried that people might try to duplicate the census mailing, as indeed we had one instance of, and indeed that mailing must have worked because we got some checks made out to that organization. Mr. Miller. What did you do? Mr. Prewitt. We sent them back to the respondents. We didn't want to be in the banking business of handling money for Mr. Glavin, as you might appreciate. We actually did get some responses to that mailing. But by putting the mandatory nature on the envelope, we were certain that nobody could duplicate the envelope and try to piggyback on the census environment. The other reason is that we have some research that suggests that slightly increases the response. We wanted to use everything that we could to get the response rate up. Mr. Miller. Did you get anyone that sent you a check and said, I refuse? Mr. Prewitt. Oh, yes. We have certified letters that come in with $100 saying, I am going to pay my fine. Mr. Miller. But the check has an address? Mr. Prewitt. Listen, the number of things we get, you would be surprised. The other day we opened up a form, there were seven $100 bills in it, and obviously somebody made a mistake. They had stuff on their desk that got put in. We found that person in less than 24 hours and returned the money to them. I was very proud of our organization. Mr. Miller. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. That is a good story to tell from your agency. At our last hearing we had quite an extensive discussion on access by various agencies to the Census Bureau. I understand that many of these issues have been worked out, but that there are ongoing conversations with the Monitoring Board. I have also heard that there has been some confrontation between oversight personnel and Census Bureau personnel, and I understand there were some threatening comments. Could you explain what happened and comment further on access, and in particular this particular incident? Mr. Prewitt. No, I am pleased to report that we have been making some headway, and with the chairman's permission and your permission, the Deputy Director has taken a major leadership responsibility in working out the access questions, so if I can ask him to respond to where we are on access issues. Mrs. Maloney. Go ahead. Mr. Miller. Mr. Barron. Mr. Barron. Good afternoon. Mrs. Maloney. Good afternoon. Mr. Barron. Yes, we have spent a lot of time on access issues. I think the major objective was to make sure that we were providing the access that all of the various oversight entities felt that they needed in order to do their job. Right now I think we are at 140 visits, either conducted or scheduled now through the end of April. I fully expect that number is going to grow some more. To my knowledge, we are working well with all those who wish to look at our activities. If there are any complaints, I hope that people will get in touch with me right away. With respect to the issue of threatening comments, I think we did have reports of one incident in one LCO. I have discussed that with the Monitoring Board staff. I think they agreed with me that this was a situation that needed to be addressed, and, in fact have now issued some guidelines on conduct which emphasize that in the course of doing these visits, Federal employees and particularly LCO staff need to be treated with courtesy and respect. I think that is mentioned several times in those guidelines, and I would like to thank the congressional side of the Monitoring Board for preparing that document and putting this issue to rest. Just in conclusion, I think given the tone of some of the comments made at the last hearing, I think this was the reason the Census Bureau had our guidelines in the first place. We have a temporary staff working for us for just a short period of time. They are a wonderful group of people, and we give them a lot of work to do, and we were just trying to manage the process by which people contact them. And over the last month I think we have made a lot of progress, and I am hoping others agree and we can go about doing the work that we need to do. Mrs. Maloney. Dr. Prewitt, what is your response to the chairman's comment that he would like to do away with the long form in 2010? Mr. Prewitt. Well, I did obviously note that response or that comment. I agree with the chairman. I think, as the chairman knows, the Census Bureau has for several years been working toward establishing the American community survey. Congress has funded this early preparatory work. We are in the field right now to see if the questions bridge between the American community survey format and the long form format in the decennial. We are coming before the Appropriations Committee tomorrow. We will be recommending in our fiscal year 2001 budget the continuation of that work. I do not see any alternative to the long form other than the American community survey. I think some of the ideas that have been mentioned in public that we ought to simply assign this task to each of the agencies to do their own individual surveys would not be a very efficient way to conduct the government's business. So I do think that the American community survey remains the most innovative and important way to get the kind of data that the country needs, not just the Federal Government, but the country needs in a timely fashion and to do it in a somewhat different environment. The questions, I should say to the committee, are no less intrusive. They are still the same questions unless the U.S. Congress decides we should not be asking these questions, which is fair enough, we won't ask them. But we believe in a sample format in which you are only talking to a quarter million people per month, that you are rolling that through the full year and the next year and the next year, that you have the opportunity to do more education about the importance of these questions with the local leaders. I think when--the important thing about the American community survey is that it is conceptualized to be deeply rooted in the local communities, and when the local leaders understand these are important data for us, then we hope that they will be out front in making the case, and that will create a public education environment, and we will get high levels of cooperation. Mrs. Maloney. Although I was not a Member of Congress in 1990, I was a member of the city council in New York and was very involved in the census and involving partnerships with the community and working with other Congress Members to get the response rate up. I don't recall any type of objection or conflict at all over the long form in 1990, and the form that we have before us now is essentially the same, only four questions less. You mentioned there was a disparity between the short form and the long form after the second week; is that correct? Mr. Prewitt. No. What I was talking about was some survey data. Mrs. Maloney. About the response rate coming back? Mr. Prewitt. Right. Mrs. Maloney. After the controversy, the response rate fell for the long form? Mr. Prewitt. No. Actually we have not tracked this day by day. I don't know as we would put much confidence even if that were the case, because as the chairman said, we expect people to hold the long form longer and to be delayed in returning it. So what we are focused upon is the end point. If we don't close what is now roughly a 12 percent gap in the long form and the short form response rate, then, as I say, operationally we have more work to do, and we also have the problem with data quality if we don't get those data. So the most important indicator, I think, of whether the campaign has had an effect will be on item nonresponse. That is, if we have millions of long forms that have come in, but there is not much on them, and if there is a significant drop- off from 1990, then we would be able to infer that obviously the conversation, as Mr. Davis just said, the kind of suggestive nature of invasiveness will have had an effect, and the country will pay a price for a decade unless we get the American community survey in quite quickly and fill in the gaps. It is serious stuff, and I am concerned that people don't understand what is at stake when you are talking about the CPI and Social Security payments, to say nothing of title I and Head Start and Clean Air and all of the other programs, the dozens and dozens and dozens of programs. But as I have said publicly, I think that the capacity of Mr. Greenspan to report to this Congress on the state of the economy becomes an issue if we have very flawed long form data. Mrs. Maloney. My time is up. Mr. Miller. Is there an organized campaign against the long form? A lot of talk show people are going after it. There is not an organized effort to do it, is there? Mr. Prewitt. I would say that I have certainly heard the leaders of the Libertarian Party, that is an organization, and I can only tell you from my e-mail traffic that when you start getting the same e-mail time and time again, it suggests that it is not just random, and when you hear the same sort of things in the talk shows. It is certainly an environment in which it is easier to create a buzz in the public discourse about something because of the Internet chat rooms. We have people who track the chat rooms, and there is a lot of it there. We have Internet sites, all of those things. Mr. Miller. Even Andy Rooney, who is not a conservative, came out saying--this is more local with me. In Sarasota, I think it was 58 percent as of yesterday, and I was rather pleased that my main county is--but the Complete Count Committee has received hundreds of calls from people who have not received a questionnaire. These are not communities with new housing units. There have been reports in the Washington Post that local areas have not received their forms. What can these people do to make sure that they get counted? Mr. Prewitt. Obviously every time we get a report that some area of the country has not received forms, we go to work on that. If we get a report that these people got their advance letter and their reminder card and did not get a form, for some reason the postal service did not mail the form. So we hope that those forms are sitting someplace in a post office and they are still in the mail stream and they will get there. But when you have a situation where no one got any piece of mail, then that suggests that there was a mail address problem. And if that is in new construction, we have finished our new construction work. We are adding about 375,000 addresses through the new construction process, and they will be enumerated in the nonresponse followup period. We have to figure out first what is the nature of the problem. You can still order a form up to April 11 by using that number. We widely publicized that number. We sometimes deliver them ourselves if we have reason to believe that it was a breakdown in our system. We are not finding many instances where it is a breakdown. Sometimes it is a slippage between the Post Office box problem. We cannot deliver to a Post Office box because that is not a geocoded address, and so some of the instances that we are picking up in the press and other ways are examples of those. But we do not ignore those. Every one of those we immediately, through our Local Census Offices, go to work in that neighborhood and sort out the nature of the problem and correct it. Mr. Miller. There is an area of Laurel in Sarasota County that said they were not counted. We are sending letters to make sure that people are aware that they will be followed up on, so there is a concern. In Florida we have a lot of seasonal residents. Longboat Key has a separate set of numbers, for example, but they have large mobile home parks for 6 months of the year. First of all, residents feel they should be counted half in each State. If one lives 6 months in Michigan and 6 months in Florida, they have emergency service needs and such. So they are arguing that they should get counted half and half. One of the problems--and in a way I wish you could have it on a form. If I have a place here in Washington, I fill out my form in my home here, and I fill out my form in Florida. If Members just throw the forms away it means that you are going to have to send an enumerator to knock on that door. I got my form in Washington, but it doesn't tell me what to do with it. Mr. Prewitt. Right. Mr. Miller. This is your second home. Longboat Key is a tourist area. It is a large mobile home park in my district. Mr. Prewitt. Obviously Longboat Key, the town, which is very low, it gets 50 percent, but half are seasonal homes. When we actually report the final number, which is different from the initial response rate, which is the return rate, it will come in at 100 percent. So they will get that credit, and we will make sure that they get that credit. And indeed across the country we know there to be roughly 9 percent or so of seasonal homes and vacant homes. Mr. Miller. How many? Mr. Prewitt. Nine percent of households or addresses in the United States, are one way or the other vacant. Now, I think your question, sir, on why we didn't have a better procedure in place for identifying the seasonal homes is a completely fair question. I wish we had. It would have been better to try to identify those households so we don't have to send out a nonresponse followup enumerator. Somebody will get to that neighborhood and say, ``yes, these five people have all driven up to Detroit,'' and they will be ticked off as seasonal and vacant housing units. In my judgment, if there was a better way, we should have done it. Mr. Miller. In Florida in the Tampa area, there were front page stories and concerns about problems within the Tampa operations. I am curious if you are aware of them and get your assurance that we are going to resolve them. I think the GAO has expressed that they would be willing to help out. I need to get your assurances that the problems in Hillsborough are going to be addressed? Mr. Prewitt. Well, two things if I could address there. First, the response rate right now from Hillsborough is within 10 percent lower than its 1990 rate. There is not any kind of big variation from the response rate. Certainly in Tampa there is an early and continuing recruitment problem. That, sir, had to do with the quality of our management staff. We had to change the management staff, and we think that we have seriously upgraded it. I can't explain to you exactly what went wrong there today because the person who had to be let go has not signed his privacy release form, so we cannot discuss that. But the Census Bureau made the decision that we knew that we did not have strong management in the Tampa office, and we acted quickly and made sure that you do have strong management. We are expecting right now in the Tampa office not to hit our 100 percent recruitment goal. We expect by the time we close down the recruitment on April 19, we will be at about 70 percent. However, we have already determined that in the surrounding areas we have an oversupply in our recruitment pool and that we will be able to borrow roughly the same kind of people that we would be hiring in Tampa. Once we put a good management team in place, the recruitment shot up. It was not that the labor pool was not there, our procedures were not effective. The Tampa article that you referred to, and I have in front of me, from the Tampa Tribune does use as its primary source of information the very individual that Carolyn Maloney just talked about. When a member of the Monitoring Board staff says, ``Most cities say they are being road-blocked by the Census Bureau from completing their task,'' I would be hesitant to take that person's testimony as the testimony about what is going on. Who could actually believe that the Census Bureau is trying not to count cities across the country? He is attributing this to most cities in the country. So I would urge you not to over attribute a particular newspaper article, especially if the source of information is someone who is willing to make those kinds of charges. Mr. Miller. There are problems at Tampa, and so the problem is not just because one person made some statements that they obviously should not have made. They are legitimate problems, and you are addressing them, and the resources are there, and I think we can give assurances that everyone is going to do what they can. Mr. Prewitt. Not just because the subcommittee chairman happens to be from that area, but Tampa was one of the problems, and we did act aggressively and successfully, and I can be reassuring that we are now on schedule, on target. We will not hit our recruitment level, but we--don't forget, it is a 5 to 1 ratio, and so we don't need all of those people. Nevertheless we would have liked to have hit our target, but we are convinced that we have the number of people to do the nonresponse followup. Mr. Miller. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. Dr. Prewitt, for the sake of our television audience and people who may be watching this, what should someone do if they have not received their questionnaire and they would like to get their census form? What should they do? Mr. Prewitt. As I think the chairman correctly said, at this stage the most important thing to do is to call the telephone assistance number, the 1-800-471-9424 number, and we will still try to get the form to you. The reason that we stress that process is because by asking our system for a questionnaire, we then will have your address because we know where we have mailed it, which means that we can geocode it more easily when it comes back in. In addition, we have the Be Counted system, which is a safety net system. We hope that a lot of people don't have to rely on the Be Counted system because it is a much harder geocoding problem. We want people to use it if there is no other way. Finally, I do remind people there are certain people who do live in new construction, we will find them in new construction, and we also have the nonresponse followup. If there is an address, we will be knocking on the door if a form didn't come in. Mrs. Maloney. Again, for our listening public, if they received two forms, if they have two apartments in the same city or two houses so they have access to their other form, what should they do with the second form? Mr. Prewitt. If they have two separate residences, they have to follow the residency rules, which are problematic. We urge them to use the form at the residence that they most frequently occupy. Mrs. Maloney. And mail back the other one? Mr. Prewitt. That goes to the chairman's question. I got one at a place that I am not living, and I mailed it back in. I put in zero in terms of the number of people living there joping that we will get that out of our nonresponse followup. It will most likely be difficult to do that, of course, but maybe they will come in, and it will be a clue. Mrs. Maloney. Say someone has three apartments in one city, and they get three different forms. If they would mail back all three, would your system catch the name? Mr. Prewitt. We have a deduplication process, but in this case we do end up with an overcount, and one of the things that the accuracy and coverage evaluation does is identify the number of people, the proportion of people who end up sending more than one form in. In 1990, when we talk about the undercount number, we talk about a net. That is a difference between the number that we doublecounted and the undercounted. We try to find them and use the accuracy and coverage verification to detect that. Mrs. Maloney. I want to emphasize how unfortunate it is that talk show hosts have called the census long form optional. I want to compliment major newspapers and writers across this country that have come out with strong editorials in support of an accurate census and in support of the long form and urging everyone to not listen to any elected official who is saying otherwise. And I have with me the Seattle Times. We have Roll Call, Tulsa, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Milwaukee Journal, the Atlanta Times, the Sacramento Bee, the Memphis paper in Tennessee, the Commercial Appeal, and they keep coming into my office, and so I think the press and the country has responded in a responsible way encouraging people to be part of this. I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. Miller. I have several other questions, but for the sake of time, we want to go on to GAO. I have some questions about proxy data and close-out verification. I would like to discuss that some more. Did you see the Dave Barry column the other day? Mr. Prewitt. Very funny. Mr. Miller. We have to have a sense of humor about this. Mr. Prewitt. No, I liked that one a lot. Mr. Miller. I know that you are very loyal about this, but you are missing your pin. Just sitting here--I know that you have dozens of them in every coat. You have been giving them away, but---- Mr. Prewitt. I appreciate the chairman. Before we get off camera, let me get my pin on. Mr. Miller. Thank you again for being here. It is a tough job. I encourage everybody to complete the form. In conclusion, thank you very much, and I will see you next time. We ask Mr. Mihm, accompanied by Mr. Robert N. Goldenkoff and Mark Bird, to come forward, and I will swear you in. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Miller. Let the record note that they answered in the affirmative. Let me briefly say since we have people watching this that the General Accounting Office is a nonpartisan organization. They have a Web site that says the GAO's mission is to help Congress oversee Federal programs and operations to ensure accountability to the American people. GAO evaluators, lawyers, economists, public policy analysts, information technology specialists and other multidisciplinary professionals seek to enhance the effectiveness and credibility of the Federal Government. We rely on GAO for all of our congressional oversight. We appreciate them. Mr. Mihm, you were involved in the 1990 census, and so we appreciate the knowledge that you have contributed to this. At this stage let me ask you to make your opening statement. STATEMENT OF J. CHRISTOPHER MIHM, ACTING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FEDERAL MANAGEMENT AND WORKFORCE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT N. GOLDENKOFF AND MARK BIRD, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE Mr. Mihm. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney. It is again an honor to appear before you today. I am joined by Robert Goldenkoff and my colleague Mark Bird, who has data processing responsibilities. This afternoon I will briefly hit the highlights of my written statement in six areas: first on the mail response rate; second on recruitment; third on update/leave operations; fourth, service-based enumeration or the counting of the homeless population; fifth on Questionnaire Assistance Centers; and sixth, data capture. First, in regards to the mail response rate, as Director Prewitt noted as of April 1, the national rate was about 55 percent. Figures 1 and 2 in my prepared statement show the progress of the mail response at the regional and local levels. As you can see from those charts, overall the news is good thus far. Overall about 90 percent of Local Census Offices are three-quarters or more of the way toward achieving the final response rate they had in 1990, which, of course, is a higher benchmark than the Bureau has budgeted for. Meeting that would go a long way toward ensuring an accurate and complete census. Second, the Bureau is making progress in meeting its recruiting goals, but certainly continued efforts are still needed. As Director Prewitt has noted, the national goal of 2.2 million qualified applicants has been met, but about 41 percent of the Local Census Offices have not met the March 30 recruitment goal compared to about 53 percent that had not met the goal as of March 2. So we are seeing real progress at the national and local level, but we still have our 40 percent of the census offices that are not where they need to be in terms of recruitment. Third, over 24 million update/leave questionnaires were delivered by 70,000 census field staff. While national data are not yet available, our observations of update/leave suggest that update/leave made important improvements in the quality of the address list, including correcting for potential lapses in earlier address list development efforts. If these corrections are accurately reflected in the maps and address binders and keyed in accurately, they will reduce problems with nonresponse followup. Fourth, the Bureau's service-based enumeration operation attempts to count individuals who lack conventional housing when they go for services such as to shelters or soup kitchens, as well as attempting to capture them at targeted outdoor locations. Despite great effort on the part of the Bureau, the inherent challenge of counting this population combined with operational problems make the completeness and accuracy of this data uncertain. Overall, through several dozen field observations in 12 different locations, we noted that the operation was well staffed and received the cooperation of service providers. In addition, enumerators largely approached their jobs with professionalism and respect for the population. Mrs. Maloney, you mentioned that you and Chairman Miller were out in the streets and saw that firsthand. I had the opportunity to see it as well. For example, a team of enumerators I accompanied during the early morning hours of March 29, in Rosslyn, VA, searched heavy underbrush along the Potomac River. This was truly impressive. They searched under the walking bridge over to Roosevelt Island, there were three different ways they went in, and they were determined to find our encampment. They did find evidence that homeless people resided there, including the mattresses and clothes and other personal belongings. On the other hand, however, we also observed the challenges that the Bureau faces in trying to count individuals without usual residences. In some locations a police presence, the weather, the tornado down in Texas, and the terrain hampered enumerators' ability to find people living on the streets. In addition, however, a lack of sufficient supplies, inadequate enumerator training in some cases, inconsistent procedures for handling rejections and inadequate advanced planning undermined the quality of the count. Overall, while these problems may have affected the quality and completeness of the count and therefore should not be minimized, it is not surprising that they occurred in such a large and complex undertaking. My fifth point is that the Bureau continues to work to ensure that its 23,700 Questionaire Assistance Centers are available to the intended populations. My prepared statement provides examples from Laredo and Del Rio, TX, of some of the successful efforts that we observed. On the other hand, we saw less input from local partners and less promotion in other census offices that we visited in Oklahoma and Virginia, although assistance centers were open in those areas as well. Finally, data capture operations. As Director Prewitt pointed out, the data capture operations are working successfully. Available operational data tends to confirm that view. But some risks still remain that warrant continued attention. In our February report we expressed concern that the short time between the conclusion of the development and test activities of the data capture system and the date when data capture operations would begin created the risk that new problems would come to light after the system was in use. This, in fact, is occurring. In fixing these new problems, the Bureau has had to delay some important changes. As we discussed at the March 2 hearing, under the two-pass approach to data processing, the Bureau is making two sets of software modifications. The first set of changes were completed in February, and the second was to be completed by April 27. The Bureau has now delayed completion until May 31 because it needs to divert personnel to address the newly arising data capture problems. If new problems continue to surface, the completion of the second release will be increasingly at risk. On behalf of the subcommittee, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Maloney, we will continue to track data processing and other key operations. This concludes my statement, and I would be happy to take any questions you may have. [The prepared statement of Mr. Mihm follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.041 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.049 Mr. Miller. The long form--one of the questions that I asked Director Prewitt was about the differential on the dress rehearsal, that was the 10 and 15 percent differential in the dress rehearsal. Director Prewitt didn't think that was a warning sign. Looking back at it, it should have told us there is a concern about privacy. It was too late at that stage to change the long form. We had to get the data, but maybe there was some other way we could have promoted it. Do you have a comment on that? Mr. Mihm. I think there were plenty of warning signs in hindsight, and that is why the Bureau sought to streamline the short and long form, make the entire approach more user- friendly and have an advertising program that focuses on what the census means to you and your community. ``It is your future, don't leave it blank.'' In addition to all of the issues that Mr. Ryan and you were mentioning, Mr. Chairman, there was a broad acknowledgment that generally public attitudes and concern about confidentiality and privacy and invasiveness were out there. In an electronic age those feelings are certainly strong. There was indeed a difference in the--or a growth in the difference in the long form/short form mail response rates between 1990 and the dress rehearsal. But on the other hand, as the Director has pointed out, mail response rates in the dress rehearsal are not predictive. One of the things that I need to take a look at is the differential long form/short form response rates from the 1988 dress rehearsal before the 1990 census, and that will give us a feel whether or not there was more of an issue out there that we should have been attentive to. Mr. Miller. I would be glad if you would let us know. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.054 Mr. Miller. Let me ask you about the data capture center, and I think the report is that things are going well. You mentioned that the Bureau assured you that the problems found in the four-site test have been resolved. Please discuss the problems experienced, and do you have documentation that the problems have been resolved? Mr. Mihm. The four-site test was the fundamental test that the Bureau did at the end of February, the 22nd to the 25th, that was to test all operations in an integrated way. In our testimony last time, we expressed some concern about the completeness of that test and the lack of information that was available to us at that point. We have since seen the report that has come out. Mark, you are most familiar with that. Mr. Bird. Yes. We received their report on the four-site test about a week ago, and we have reviewed it. The report itself does a good job of documenting many of the problems and the resolution of the problems. In addition, the system development contractor has a process for identifying, tracking and resolving problems, and that is an effective process. By way of example, one of the problems that was identified was that there was a discrepancy between the number of data files that had been transmitted to headquarters and the number of data files that had been reported as transmitted to headquarters. That discrepancy has been resolved. Mr. Miller. You mention that the contractor proposed eliminating system acceptance testing to ensure quality to save time. Please discuss that in further detail, and what are the implications in that? Mr. Bird. In a large system development and acquisition effort such as DCS 2000, it is important for the acquiring organization, which, of course, in this case is the Federal Government, to have some insight into the contractor's progress in the development of the system. Heretofore in the DCS 2000 program, that has been accomplished in part by system acceptance testing, which has been witnessed by the government. So if, as has been proposed, system acceptance testing on the ongoing development work of DCS 2000 is eliminated, we would be concerned if there is no other opportunity for the government to witness testing. We don't yet know whether that is the case because the plans for the ongoing DCS 2000 development have not been finalized. Mr. Miller. Let me ask about the recruiting, and I will bring up the Tampa issue. Recruiting can be successful in New York, but if you can't solve the problems in Tampa, there are surrounding areas that can fill in, I am assuming, in the St. Petersburg or Lakeland or some close-by areas. How serious of a problem is it? You said half of the local census service offices are understaffed at this stage as far as the number of potential nonresponse followup workers, and have they reacted adequately to address that issue? Mr. Mihm. About 41 percent have not met their most recent recruiting goal. This is a bit of an issue of concern. In a large national undertaking, a normal distribution applies. You have some that are doing very well and some that trail off at the end. And the national numbers showing success are taking advantage of the fact that the Denver and Dallas region are approaching 120 percent of the goal. And so it is a bit of a concern, or at least it is still a reason to continue to watch recruiting efforts--as Director Prewitt said, they certainly will continue to do aggressive recruiting down at the local level. In regards to your comment about how feasible is it to move people across areas and have them work in different offices, in some cases that can work. It adds additional travel cost, of course, to the Bureau because they do pay mileage for transportation. The issue, though, is that generally they find census takers want to enumerate neighborhoods that they are familiar with, and people want to be enumerated by people that they are familiar with. To the extent that you try and move people or ask people to work successfully in different neighborhoods, you usually find a lot of refusal, and you usually find that people are unwilling. Mr. Miller. How serious is that 41 percent that you are using; 41 percent of the LCOs are not adequately hired up? Mr. Mihm. It is hard to say at this point. They have 70,000 people on the ground doing update/leave and didn't report significant staffing problems. As Director Prewitt noted, the big question is when they are going to have 500,000 enumerators on the ground doing nonresponse followup, and that becomes an enormous challenge for them. Thus far it appears that the recruitment program, the geographic pay rates that are higher and more aggressively managed than in 1990, and certainly the recruitment process generally is more aggressively managed than in 1990, seems to be paying off in many areas. But there are these 41 percent of the offices that, in our view, are the ones that bear some scrutiny. What we are going to be doing over the coming days as we get a better feel for where the mail response is shaking out for census offices is to compare these two and try to come up with a set of offices that are having both recruitment problems and mail response problems, and that will allow all of us--and I know the Bureau does the exact same thing--allow all of us to have a defined subset of what are the likely offices with the most challenge. Mr. Miller. Tampa had a management problem, and they don't necessarily correlate? Mr. Mihm. Not necessarily. In some cases they do. One of the things that I think is good to see this time is that the pattern from 1990. In 1990, they had a great number of problems with recruitment. In this--for 2000, you are still seeing some poor mail response. We discussed when Mr. Davis was here the problems that they have having in Chicago. They are having some problems in New Orleans, as well. There are 8 to 10 offices where they are having the biggest challenges in terms of mail response. Those are not necessarily the offices where they are having the biggest recruitment problems. In some cases there are correlations, but it is not as uniform as it was last time. Mr. Miller. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. For the record, since it was such a large discussion at our last hearing, Mr. Mihm, have you had any access problems? Mr. Mihm. No, ma'am. On the contrary, I was able to talk to senior Bureau people over the last week, spoke with Director Prewitt and Deputy Director Barron today and told them that we continued to have good cooperation from them. Our access issues were resolved. We had a number of people that were on the field during the soup kitchen and shelter and the targeted nonshelter outdoor location, they were very, very cooperative and very accommodating. We are expecting that it will continue to be that way because of the efforts of the Bureau, and certainly the efforts of this subcommittee, to make sure that we had appropriate access. Mrs. Maloney. On the substance of your report, your testimony reflects the usual thorough job of GAO, and it points out a number of what I would call minor challenges, but it certainly doesn't seem to be anything that would threaten the success of the 2000 census. In fact, I read your testimony or hear your testimony as essentially good news. Is that a proper characterization? Mr. Mihm. I would agree, yes, ma'am. As we have been saying now for many months, the linchpin of a successful census is a high mail response rate. And at this point we are looking at a pretty good mail response rate. Depending on the bump that the Bureau gets over the next couple of days, the Census Bureau Director mentioned that they are at 57 percent, or that is the number that they will come out with today. Within the next day or so, we will see any bump that they got from April 1, and then if he gets another hit coming next week, we could be well over 61 percent and approaching the 1990 numbers. As we have said before, each percentage point is 1.2 million fewer cases that need nonresponse followup and $34 million that could be better spent. Mrs. Maloney. This is an important point that you raise. The two principal risks that you raised in December were the Bureau's mail response time and also the tight labor market which you have been discussing. Overall how would you rate the response rate? Very good? Extremely good? Mr. Mihm. At this point it does seem quite good. As I mentioned, 90 percent of the local census offices are at three- quarters or more of the 1990 rate, which means that they are in striking range of the mail response rate that they got in 1990. I agree with what Director Prewitt was saying, that the relevant indicator for most district offices is not the national rate, it is doing better than you did in 1990. There are some areas of concern. The big issue now is-- irrespective of a good mail response rate--is to make sure that we get out of the field as quickly as possible. Even with the Bureau's assumptions, which would be a 61 percent mail response rate, they were still looking at following up on about 49 million cases in 10 weeks, which is shorter than the amount of time than it took in 1990. So one of the concerns is as we get toward the end of this operation, are we closing out those crew leader districts, as the director mentioned, prematurely, or what kind of controls does the Bureau have in place that we do not go to last resort or proxy data before they should. That is the next big issue. Mrs. Maloney. Are you willing to make any predictions about where we might end up with these numbers? Mr. Mihm. I would prefer not. I wish I could. The Bureau is taking exactly the right position on this, and that is a tone of cautious optimism. They know, and their response model shows that as we get closer to that 61 percent and even closer to 65 percent or 90 plus 5, it gets harder and harder to get, because there is a significant trail-off in mail response. In order to get to 61 percent, we are looking at basically another 750,000 cases per day in each of the next 10 days. Can they make it? They certainly can, but on the other hand, I would not be necessarily shocked if we came in just right below that. But I think the news overall looks good for them on the mail response rate. Mrs. Maloney. How is the Bureau's Internet questionnaire progressing? Mr. Mihm. It had not been tested before, and it was not something that they put an enormous effort in. The Bureau had established the possibility of getting up to a million responses to that. The reality is quite a bit lower, and they are not necessarily disappointed with that. It is in the neighborhood of tens of thousands. It is about 60,000 or 70,000. Mr. Goldenkoff. It is about 58,000. Mr. Mihm. We, at the request of the subcommittee, had done some preliminary looks at the security provisions that they had in place and came away convinced that, at least from the standpoint of the stated provisions, that they did have a secure system. They have done some testing to see if it could be hacked into. It has been successful in that regard. The big issue with the Internet is for the 2010 census. This came very late in the cycle and didn't get a dress rehearsal test. For 2010 we all need to look in a hard way at using the Internet, and technology generally needs to be seriously investigated, and I am sure the Bureau will do that. Mrs. Maloney. You commented that you felt the homeless organization could have been better organized. It certainly was not the experience that Mr. Miller and I had. They even swore us in. We said--they insisted on swearing us in, and we went out in a very organized way with the count. I read in the paper that Los Angeles, in that region they used individuals from the homeless community to accompany the enumerators as they went out on the street. Was that done in New York City? Was that a process that was followed across the country? It seems like a very good idea. Mr. Mihm. In regards to was it done in New York City, I am not sure. I do know it was a provision that the Bureau had nationally. Those people were technically called gatekeepers, and they were to be as you characterized, the representatives or very close or to even the homeless persons themselves that would basically be able to go into areas and say, the census is here, it is OK, it is important for us to be enumerated. In the observations that I did and my colleagues did, we didn't find that was necessarily the case that they used the gatekeepers. I didn't find, certainly in any of the observations that I did, it was a problem that those gatekeepers were not there. The census enumerators, as I mentioned in my statement, dealt with the people that they were enumerating with professionalism and respect for the dignity of those individuals. In fact, one of the mantras that the Bureau had is that we do not wake up people who were sleeping, and there were a number of people that I noticed, census enumerators, were waiting for people to wake up. Once they woke up, they would enumerate them. They made the correct judgment that it is better to have enumerators standing around rather than disturb someone that is asleep. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much. Mr. Miller. I have a couple more questions. There was an article in yesterday's CQ Daily Monitor about privacy on an appropriation subcommittee. There was somebody there from Eagle Forum, Public Citizen, from Public Interest Research Group, National Center for Victims of Crime and the ACLU. Privacy has become more and more of a concern. I think it is worth including this. You mentioned several problems in conducting the update/ leave operations. There are reports of children taking questionnaires off of doors or gates. What impact will all of these problems have on the quality of data from these regions? Should we be concerned? Mr. Mihm. Let me deal first with anyone removing a census form from a door. That would be then is presumably a nonresponse. It requires the Census Bureau to hire and train an enumerator to make up to the six visits to get that family in. That is a very unfortunate occurrence if it happens even one time, and extremely unfortunate if it happens quite often. The types of problems that we found were twofold. One is that the need to do extensive updating of the address registers, and the maps suggest in a positive way that doing update/leave was an important step in order to clean up those maps, and may have made some important additions and changes and improvements to previous address listing efforts. The key now will be to make sure that the changes get consistently included in the nonresponse packet. If an update/ leave enumerator went out there and found a problem with the map and corrected it, and that doesn't get corrected, then the census enumerator who goes out for nonresponse may have exactly the same problem. There should be a house here; I don't see that house. So there are some real efficiency concerns in both of those instances. Mr. Miller. I am hearing more and more counts of late or unavailable supplies and also the questionnaires in different languages, both from you and other field operations people. What is the reason for those problems, and how serious a problem is it? Mr. Mihm. We are still trying to find out the reason. The problem is across virtually all operations and across geography in the Nation. It does seem to be a nagging concern of a lack of supplies, and we are not just talking about the papers and pens, we have been focusing on training supplies not getting there in time. In the case of San Francisco, the short forms that they used to enumerate during the service-based enumeration did not get there in time, as I mentioned in my written statement, so they had to photocopy the forms, which requires that when the real forms come in, that they be recopied back at the local census office, because each has to have a unique identifier on them. There are a number of nagging stories of supplies not getting out, and whether it be training kits or foreign language recruitment material, the census in the schools not getting out in time, we are trying to still look at the causes of all of this. And it could be everything from it is in the local office and they don't know it yet--we have all been to some of these local census offices where we see boxes and boxes of material--to the distribution out of the Jeffersonville center. We are certainly going to be continuing to track the supply issue during nonresponse to see whether this is a pervasive problem. Mr. Miller. One important lesson learned from the dress rehearsals was the importance of clear expectations between the Census Bureau and community partners. It seems that the partnership program is having mixed results in 2000. Do you have a sense why this is occurring? Has the Census Bureau performed outreach uniformly across America? Mr. Mihm. They certainly offered. The 39,000 governments were offered the opportunity to participate. As we have reported in previous statements and in a couple of reports to the subcommittee, what we have found fairly consistently is a mismatch in expectations between local governments and the Census Bureau. Without going too far, it appears that a lot of this mismatch and expectations was particularly prevalent among some of the smaller or rural governments. Large cities have the expertise and experience to run a complete count type of program. They know what they are doing, and they understand clearly the stakes in an accurate count for them. The rural areas, especially when they have one or maybe even two employees at the local government, to ask them to take on the additional responsibilities of being the chief promoter and organizer of complete count in that community is onerous. They don't know how much they can rely on the Bureau. And so we have found some unevenness in the promotion and outreach campaign, particularly the complete count element of that. In order to get a more systematic view, and certainly to build for lessons learned, we are going to be doing some more detailed work down at the local level to try to get a feel both in successful areas and less successful areas asking what are the key ingredients of a profitable business partnership so we can build on that for 2010. Mr. Miller. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney. My last comment is that I hope everyone who has not filled out their form will be part of the census. Don't leave your future blank. This is a bipartisan effort. It is a responsibility of every resident in America, and as you pointed out, it is going to cost us more if you don't fill it out because we have to have enumerators. So it is important that you fill out your form. Mr. Miller. Thank you for being here. We appreciate GAO keeping on top of the issues. Next week I think we have the Congressional Monitoring Board before this subcommittee. I ask unanimous consent that all Members' and witnesses opening statements be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered. In case there are additional questions Members may have for our witnesses, I ask unanimous consent for the record to remain open for 2 weeks, and that the witnesses submit written answers as soon as practical. I would like to submit the Census Monitoring Board's congressional Members' request for oversight materials mentioned earlier for the record. Without objection, so ordered. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:41 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] [Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.058 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0056.061