[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF BUREAU OF THE CENSUS OPERATIONS
AND ACTIVITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CENSUS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 8, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-148
__________
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
66-613 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
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, Clerk
David McMillen, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 8, 2000.................................... 1
Statement of:
Prewitt, Kenneth, Director of the Census, accompanied by John
Thompson................................................... 19
Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York:
Letter dated March 8, 2000............................... 11
Observation Guidelines for Census 2000 Operations........ 61
Prepared statement of.................................... 17
Miller, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Florida, prepared statement of.......................... 5
Prewitt, Kenneth, Director of the Census:
Letter dated March 20, 2000.............................. 45
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
OVERSIGHT OF THE 2000 CENSUS: STATUS OF BUREAU OF THE CENSUS OPERATIONS
AND ACTIVITIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2000
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the Census,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Miller
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Miller, Ryan, and Maloney.
Staff present: Jane Cobb, staff director; Timothy J. Maney,
chief investigator; Chip Walker, communications director; Erin
Yeatman, press secretary; Lara Chamberlain, professional staff
member; Amy Althoff, clerk; David McMillen and Mark Stephenson,
minority professional staff members; and Ellen Rayner, minority
chief clerk.
Mr. Miller. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, the
subcommittee will come to order, and we will proceed. It is my
understanding there may be a vote around 2 o'clock, so we may
have to take a vote break at that time.
Good afternoon. Today, we are here to examine the ongoing
operations for the 2000 census. In our monthly public review of
this process, once again, Dr. Prewitt, Director of the Census
Bureau is before us, and next week the GAO will come before the
subcommittee as well.
Since our last hearing, there have been several new
developments that have not been positive. The Salvation Army
has declined to let Census enumerators into homeless shelters
and soup kitchens. If there is any way that we in this
subcommittee can assist you in this matter, Dr. Prewitt, or in
any similar matters, please let us know.
There are also serious recruiting shortages across the
country in a number of hard-to-enumerate areas. And we are all
aware of the very serious addressing error of approximately 120
million prenotification letters.
Also today, this subcommittee will address the lack of
access to the Census Bureau operations and information for the
subcommittee, the General Accounting Office and the Census
Monitoring Board.
Just last week, I spoke to the GAO, who complained of lack
of access and delayed responses to information requests. The
GAO made it clear to me that much of the information they
requested should be readily available to regional and local
managers if they are truly getting the timely information they
need to make daily decisions in the field.
The Census Monitoring Board fights tooth and nail to get
information it needs to conduct its oversight responsibilities.
The Census Monitoring Board was set up under agreement with the
President to assist Congress in its oversight duties. Employees
of the Census Monitoring Board are Title 13, sworn and entitled
to all information just as this subcommittee or the GAO is.
Currently, the Census Monitoring Board has more than 30
requests outstanding, refused, or delayed more than 60 days for
information with the Bureau. Director Prewitt, this is
unacceptable.
The experience of my own subcommittee has been troubling as
well. Critical information such as recruiting numbers or
contact information has not been provided in a timely manner. A
recent request made to obtain the Bureau's recruiting numbers
took almost 2 weeks to be answered.
Rather than just provide us the information we ask for,
different delaying tactics seem to be used. In some cases, the
subcommittee has been questioned as to what we plan to do with
this information. This turns the role of Congress and
government agencies on its head. This is the people's census.
This subcommittee has a right to any and all information we
deem appropriate.
While some at the Bureau may feel that oversight entities
are a burden on the Census process, you must understand that it
is our legal responsibility to investigate, evaluate and assess
the hundreds of activities that involve the expenditure of $7
billion of public funds to carry out the constitutionally
mandated decennial census.
The combined resources of this subcommittee, the GAO and
the Census Monitoring Board is barely sufficient to oversee the
massive undertaking of the Census Bureau. As you have so
accurately noted, this is the largest peacetime mobilization in
our Nation's history, with hundreds of thousands of workers and
520 local Census offices.
The combined resources of the subcommittee, the GAO, the
Census Monitoring Board and the Inspector General pale in
comparison to the Bureau's massive operations. We are talking
about roughly 42 people between the IG, the GAO, the Census
Monitoring Board and the subcommittee overseeing the 520 Census
offices, hundreds of ongoing Census operations, more than
800,000 positions and $7 billion in expenditures.
By now, I am sure you are aware of my concerns regarding
the unprecedented stalls and delays in gaining access to basic
information. I am requesting your help in breaking down these
barriers so that we--in Congress, the Census Monitoring Board,
the GAO and the IG--may fulfill our responsibilities under law
and in an efficient and timely manner.
Director Prewitt, you made a pledge that this would be a
transparent Census. Unfortunately, it has been rather opaque.
In light of these access issues, I have found it necessary to
call a hearing specifically on the lack of proper access. This
will be held on March 23 at 2 p.m. I hope these access concerns
are sufficiently resolved well beforehand.
Last month's revelation of the addressing error made by
Freedom Graphic Systems on the prenotification letter is a
serious matter. The Census Bureau has spent the better part of
this decade developing its Master Address File.
The heart of the Census is a good address list, because the
bulk of enumeration is based on mail-out/mail back responses.
Now this error doesn't appear to be contained within the MAF
itself. However, the fact that the addresses were misprinted is
still troubling. Regardless of how good the MAF is, if the
addressing is compromised anywhere along the process it can
still pose serious and, in some cases, crippling problems. This
error underscores the serious need for aggressive oversight by
this subcommittee.
While I have publicly urged those receiving Census forms to
read them, no matter what the address they may read on the
envelope, and while the Postal Service has said it will deliver
the letters to the correct addresses, I cannot share your
determination that this error is cosmetic and not operational.
I don't believe that anyone knows if a misaddressed
envelope sent to ``Resident'' is less likely to be read than it
otherwise would have been. The importance of the
prenotification letters to the hard-to-enumerate communities,
especially those not speaking English, is high.
The prenotification letter also allows those speaking one
of five other languages besides English, to choose that
language for the Census questionnaire. Unfortunately, there may
be another problem emerging from this mailing list. The
Washington Times and other newspapers are reporting today that
it now seems those who speak only English are confused by the
lack of explanations for the mailing and the return envelope
inside. The subcommittee understood that these mailings had
been fully tested in focus groups. The subcommittee will
certainly want to see the focus group testing results to
understand how this mailing was developed.
In light of these concerns, the subcommittee will be
investigating this matter fully. We are enlisting the support
of the Commerce Department's Inspector General, as well as the
General Accounting Office.
This error also, once again, casts doubt on the ability of
the Census Bureau to carry out one of the most complicated
statistic experiments ever, better known as A.C.E.
I would like to publicly thank the U.S. Postal Service. The
Postal Service has already stepped up to the plate to help the
Census Bureau and, in fact, America, by making a pledge to
deliver the misaddressed letters to the proper households.
Dr. Prewitt, we all know hiring is so critical to a
successful Census. You note that nationally the hiring is going
according to schedule; however, when one looks at hiring
locally, a different picture emerges.
In recent weeks, the subcommittee staff has visited local
Census offices that are having severe hiring problems in San
Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Salt River Indian
Community outside of Phoenix. Similar problems are found by the
Monitoring Board in New York City.
To be fair, these visits also found local Census offices
that were ahead of schedule, in Long Beach and Tukwila, WA.
However, it is the ones behind schedule that have us concerned.
Here in DC, the recent stories in both the Washington Times and
the Post have highlighted local hiring shortages. In fact,
recent news reports have caused Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton
to call for an emergency meeting among local officials to solve
this problem. An emergency job summit will be held later this
month, and I applaud Ms. Norton on her quick action.
I am not totally convinced that the Bureau has a handle on
this hiring problem. Looking at hiring nationally does not give
one a true sense of where we stand. I hope you can shed some
light on these important local hiring issues. Many of these
communities are hard to locate and count.
Again, Dr. Prewitt, thank you for coming before the
subcommittee, and we look forward to the opportunity to ask
some questions.
Mrs. Maloney.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Miller follows:]
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Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome again, Dr. Prewitt.
As the Census Bureau begins the most intensive operations
of the 2000 census, Congress and the American public need to
stay informed on the progress of the largest peacetime
mobilization in American history.
I am happy to say, from reading your testimony, Dr.
Prewitt, that it appears that the 2000 census operations are on
schedule, and as of today, there are no major problems. A year
ago, many prophets of doom questioned the likely success of the
2000 census. While we are far from done, I think we can all
take pride in the excellent work of the career professionals at
the Census Bureau in successfully meeting the major milestones
to date.
Dr. Prewitt, some might have scoffed if you had appeared
before this committee a year ago and predicted that today the
Census Bureau would have all 520 local Census offices up and
running, fully equipped, with computers and telecommunications
installed and totally operational; that the Master Address File
of 120 million addresses, which may be the most complete ever,
due to improved processes, including LUCA and new construction
programs, would be completed and in use; that one of my
favorite initiatives, the Census in the Schools Programs, would
have exceeded its original goals and sent out over 1.3 million
teaching kits to schools around the Nation; that the telephone
questionnaire assistance centers would be opened, running and
fully operational; that the data capture centers and the
software they use would be tested and already processing forms;
that questionnaires would already be delivered to rural areas;
that questionnaires would already be filed through the
Internet; that over 90,000 partnerships between the Census and
cities, towns, businesses and churches would be up and running;
that the highly acclaimed paid advertising campaign would now
be going into full gear.
In the interest of time, I won't keep going through all of
the lists of initiatives that your office has put into place,
but I do want to mention my new favorite Census promotional
tool, the Census Promotional Tour Bus that is on the road and
educating people.
I spent a day riding around my region on the bus, talking
to people. I think it is absolutely an excellent tool. I wish
we had more of them in our areas or regions across the country.
I think they are very, very effective.
I am sure there are some even in this room who would have--
well, let us be polite--questioned you for being overly
optimistic. More importantly, even a few months ago, if you
would have told this committee that recruiting would be above
target and going well, I can only imagine what some would have
said. While there are places in the country that have
recruiting problems, on a national level, recruiting is above
target.
Given the Clinton-Gore prosperity our Nation is currently
experiencing, with historically low unemployment levels, the
success of the Bureau's recruiting efforts is all the more
remarkable.
I don't want to imply that things are perfect, because
there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done, and
we know there will be problems. The recent mishap with the
addressing of the notification letter is an example. I would
like to mention that I did receive my letter; I have it right
here. It came over the weekend, so it came to my home, and it
was delivered.
I am pleased that the Post Office reports that there have
been no operational problems with this mailing, and they should
be commended for the extra effort taken to ensure that all 120
million letters arrived on time.
But on the whole, we are in as good as shape as one could
hope, given our recent history and given the fact that the
Census Bureau had to revamp its program only last year to
integrate $1.6 billion worth of additional effort as a result
of litigation by the opponents of modern statistical methods.
In fact, I would say that one reason the Census is on track
as of today is because many of us in Congress and President
Clinton resisted the efforts of some to micromanage the Census
and left that up to the professionals in the Census department.
I would only hope that as we proceed and problems develop
that we can keep all the people looking over your shoulder--
this committee, the Monitoring Board, the GAO, the IG, the
National Academy of Sciences and the advisory groups--that we
can keep them over your shoulder and out of your lap, so that
you can do your job without being disrupted.
Mr. Chairman, I know you share my concern that we cannot
harm the Census with overzealous oversight. While we should
conduct oversight, we cannot afford to do so in such an
overpowering way that the staff of the Census Bureau cannot get
their job done.
And in talking about oversight, I would like to really put
in the record the cochair of the Census Monitoring Board, Mr.
Blackwell's letter, which he carbon-copied to many people, but
he left me out, in which he notes 31 areas, centers that he
wants to see. I would like that in the record along with my
comments.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mrs. Maloney. Again, as we proceed, there will be problems,
big and small, but I would remind everyone that this is a
massive, complicated process. I read in today's Washington
Post, and I have--they have an article here, a small article,
that a few hundred people out of the 120 million contacted
complained they were confused about the postage-paid envelope
included; for those who know what they are reading--and that
story is good news--33,000 envelopes were returned from people
requesting language forms on the first day.
In America, to have a few hundred people call and complain
about a mailing to 120 million people is pretty good,
especially if it guarantees Americans with limited English
skills can respond to the Census.
As I said, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to learn that the
timetables and tests for the 2000 census are currently on
track. I look forward to hearing the details of the many Census
operations from our witness, Director Prewitt.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
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[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Miller. The record will identify that all three
answered in the affirmative. And, Dr. Prewitt, your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT, DIRECTOR OF THE CENSUS,
ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN THOMPSON
Mr. Prewitt. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do
have an opening statement. I will try to go through it quickly.
I might say that it does not address the issues raised in your
opening statement; instead, it addresses the issues that are of
course in the invitation letter.
I would hope that before the hearing is completed, I will
have a chance to address the issues you raised in your opening
statements.
Mr. Miller. The first set of questions.
Mr. Prewitt. Thank you. Let me start by identifying the
major operations and preparation for census 2000 that have been
successfully completed so far, to reiterate some of the things
that Congresswoman Maloney just mentioned.
The Master Address File of 120 million addresses is, of
course, complete and we think quite accurate.
Our field network of 12 regional offices and 520 Census
offices, local offices, are open and are hard at work.
We printed 85 different Census forms, which will go to the
addresses in our address file, and developed and implemented
our ambitious paid advertising campaign and signed up 90,000
partners.
All of this happened without a glitch? No, of course not.
There were endless issues, large and small, that had to be
resolved.
The Census is a vast, multipart, rapidly moving system
involving hundreds of operations and hundreds of thousands of
temporary employees. On a daily basis, we have to deal with
problems such as the fire in one, flood in another of our local
Census offices, the need to develop special procedures for
handling the temporarily displaced persons from the North
Carolina flood, to deal with the issue that you addressed in
your own opening comments, the Salvation Army response to our
attempt to count in their soup kitchens, the backlogs caused by
the higher-than-expected demand for Census in the Schools, two
separate bomb threats in a local Census office, a misspelling
on a poster, public confusion among some English-speaking
residents about the lack of instruction in the advance letter.
Indeed, another small issue that has come up--and I want to
thank you and Mrs. Maloney for your statements concerning
this--was the recent mailing that appeared to mimic an official
Census form, but in fact, was simply a fundraising device.
We are very concerned that the deceptive mailings could
reduce mail response by sowing confusion about what is or what
is not an official Census form. The point is, we are in the
process of successfully dealing with each of these issues, and
the list is far from exhaustive. New ones will take their place
tomorrow and the next day and every day until the census is
completed.
While such issues require attention and resources, while
they can be frustrating, while they often generate news stories
we then try to correct, they are not of a nature to put the
census at risk. Such an issue could arise, but to date it has
not. Indeed, the most significant issue to date has been the
addressing error on the advance letter, but as we all know,
this was not of a character that put the census at risk. And I
will address in more detail, of course, the issue of the
advance letter in the question-and-answer period, if you wish.
I should say that all of our indications are that the
advance letter is being correctly mailed and, indeed, it is
being read. I will give you one indicator of that, sir, the
advance letter has a website address which is a job website
address. Prior to the mailing of the advance letter, we were
running about 100,000 hits a day to that website. The last--
yesterday or the day before yesterday, last time I was able to
get the data, there were 1 million hits on that website, 1
million hits. That is in a multiple of 10, so that suggested to
me that people are reading the letter and responding to it. And
as the Congresswoman just said, we are already getting a flow
of requests for our language forms.
We have taken additional steps in our advertising campaign
with our community partners and through the media to stress the
importance of the advance letter. We have done this because we
do stress its importance, particularly because of the fact that
it is the vehicle for getting a language form; but also because
it is a way to address the job issue, and it is a way to
increase awareness, although I can say that awareness right now
is very high about the census.
The point is that when I last testified to you, I pledged
to you that I would bring to your attention any problems in the
implementation of census 2000 that, in my judgment, could put
the census at risk. After that testimony, I subsequently
advised you by letter of the several categories in which a
serious or systemic problem could occur in the current
timeframe, that is, between that testimony and today.
In that letter, I identified the fact that we had to launch
our update/leave operation, and that if we were unsuccessful in
launching that, that would be serious. I addressed the fact of
possible problems with our payroll system, our problems filling
our enumerator positions, our address file problem that would
prevent our employees from being able to fulfill their
responsibilities, or a breakdown in the telephone questionnaire
assistance operation. All of those operations had been launched
on schedule and successfully. It doesn't mean something won't
happen tomorrow, but as of today, there is simply nothing going
on in the Census operations that puts the census itself at
risk.
I want to add to that list because a lot of new things are
going to happen between now and the next testimony--and I now
refer to the March 29th testimony when I am scheduled to
testify before a different committee, that is, the House
Appropriations Subcommittee of which you are a member, of
course, Mr. Chairman.
By March 29th, we expect to complete the update/leave
operation, mail out the questionnaires in the mailout/mailback
areas, begin the data capture process, start enumeration of
special populations, and begin reporting to the Nation the
mailback response rate as part of our ``90 Plus Five''
campaign.
Major problems could develop during this period, including
breakdowns in data capture systems or in questionnaire
delivery, unexpectedly low mail response rates, any event that
could undermine faith in the confidentiality of the data, such
as a hacker on our Internet site, or a failure to meet our
promise to provide the mailback response rate to the public.
I don't anticipate those happening, but I want to put them
on the record as the categories of things that I would quickly
get to your attention if we begin to experience serious
problems.
So I today renew my pledge to keep you informed should
major census-threatening problems develop in these areas or any
others. I am not anticipating such problems. I expect our
scheduled hearing will keep you apprised of any potential
changes needed to ensure that census 2000 data are of the
highest quality.
You specifically asked, of course, about a number of
operations. I will try to cover those quickly. You asked about
the status of the census 2000 operational timeline, and
readiness for key activities. As I mentioned already, we began
the update/leave operation on March 3rd, as planned. We are
running today slightly ahead of schedule in terms of getting
the update/leave questionnaires out. Census enumerators are
leaving questionnaires at approximately 24 million housing
units, including Puerto Rico, that have several different
address types.
Telephone questionnaire assistance centers also began on
March 3rd, and will run through June 8th with six toll-free
telephone numbers in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean,
Vietnamese and Tagalog, where people can call to get assistance
in filling out their questionnaires, get language assistance
guides or provide their Census questionnaire information over
the phone. Indeed, we have already recorded 500 short forms
over the telephone system. The questionnaire assistance center
is up and running. That doesn't mean we won't have a problem
with it tomorrow, but as of today, I am confident that we are
able to handle the flow of telephone calls.
We have also identified 27,000 sites for our questionnaire
assistance center operations. And as I already mentioned, we
have already mailed the advance letter, and in 5 days--indeed,
sometimes the Post Office gets a bit ahead of us, so I am
already getting reports that some forms are out--but in 5 days,
from March 13th to March 15th, the Postal Service will deliver
questionnaires to some 98 million addresses in the mailout/
mailback areas. These questionnaires are all at the postal
delivery centers and are ready to be delivered.
Also, beginning March 13th and continuing through March and
April, Census enumerators will visit about half a million
housing units in our list/enumerate areas, in an operation
similar to that initiated in Alaska on January 19th. These are
the remote, sparsely populated areas where it is not efficient
to compile a pre-census address list.
And then on March 20th, we will mail out a reminder card to
those housing units we are asking to return a form by mail.
Many will already have mailed back their form, but this
reminder card will spur others to do so as soon as possible.
So those are some of the things that are already in place
and then some things that we anticipate in the next several
weeks, all of which are reasonably large categories of things.
I want to put those things in one pile and the kinds of other
problems we deal with every day, all day long, in a separate
pile; they are simply different kinds of things.
We are dealing with the small issues as best we can as we
go. They are the ones that stir the press reports, but they are
not of the sort that are putting the census at risk.
You asked in your letter of invitation about the status of
hiring goals. Hiring continues to progress well. All hiring
goals for the update/leave operation have been met; that is, we
now have 73,000 people out there doing the job. Our goal is to
have a qualified applicant approval of 2.4 million individuals,
and as of today, or as of Friday when we collected these data,
we had recruited over 1.8 million qualified applicants, 74
percent of those who are needed, and slightly ahead of our goal
from March 1, which is 70 percent.
Of course, not every office is on target, and for these, we
take special steps. These steps range in intensity based upon
where a local Census office is in relation to the goal. If an
office is below, but near the goal, for example, we increase
the recruiting staff, distribute fliers, use targeted postcard
mailings or seek help from our partners. If an office is at
less than 75 percent of the goal, we intensify the activities,
including things like neighborhood blitzes, making special
appeals to community-based organizations, and bringing in
outside expertise with respect to recruitment. As a last
resort, we are prepared to raise wages to assure an adequate
pool of workers.
Of course, we concentrate these efforts depending upon the
task at hand and, thus, first made certain that the local
Census offices with heavy update/leave operations had
sufficient staff. They did and do in every case. Now, of
course, our attention turns to nonresponse followup due to
start April 19th.
Given the time available, the fact that we are front
loading, and the capacity to take extraordinary steps if
necessary, being able to staff the Census operations is not
what is currently keeping me awake at night; other things are,
but that is not.
You asked us to address the status of data capture systems,
including recent test results and the subsequent migration to
the ``two pass'' system. The Census Bureau recently completed
the final operations test and dry run according to plan in a
preproduction operations test at all four sites.
During the operations test and dry run in two of our sites,
we learned that key data required for many write-in items and
some check-box entries was taking longer than originally
estimated. Based on these test results, we have implemented a
two-pass processing system. In the first pass, we will capture
the 100 percent data that is asked of everyone and some of
which is necessary to provide the constitutionally mandated
apportionment numbers to the President. In the second pass, we
will capture the sample data from the long forms.
This approach ensures that we will meet all processing
deadlines and provides us with some staffing contingency. The
decision has no impact on the schedule for the release of
information for apportionment and redistricting, and only
minimal impact on the release of sample data.
During the four-site test, staff introduced and
successfully tested the first pass of the ``two pass'' software
for the 100 percent data items. And we are developing the
testing schedule for the second pass.
You asked about any difficulties in confronting local or
regional Census offices. All local Census offices and regional
offices are functioning, that was my report 10 minutes ago.
There could have been a fire in the last 10 minutes, there
could have been a flood; you don't know; 520 is a large number
of entities, something happens to one of them almost every day.
But as of right now, they are all up and functioning.
We are working closely with GAO, where we have specific
problems, like the water problem in the New York city office.
But the key thing is they are there. They all have their
telephone installations, and they are handing calls on
schedule.
You asked about preparation issues concerning Internet
response to census 2000 short form questionnaires. Internet
data collection and questionnaire assistance began on March
3rd. For the first time, the Census Bureau is providing
questionnaire assistance over the Internet and the option of
answering the short form questionnaire via the Internet. The
questionnaire assistance effort provides on-line help to
respondents who need help in completing either a traditional
paper questionnaire or the web-based Internet short form, as
well as providing answers to frequently asked questions about
census 2000.
Of course, the Internet data collection option allows
respondents to answer an English language version of the short
form questionnaire over a special secure Internet website, if
they can provide a valid housing unit identification number
from the paper questionnaire.
Indeed, using the bar code from my correctly delivered
advance letter, I completed my form the other night in less
than 3 minutes on the Internet. Internet data collection will
operate until April 15, 2000. The questionnaire assistance part
of the operations will end the first week of June.
You asked about the status of and issues concerning
questionnaire assistance centers and ``Be-Counted''
questionnaire sites. Our partnership staff are working with
community groups, business leaders and local government
officials to identify the Be-Counted sites appropriate to each
community. Staff have confirmed over 15,000 sites at these
locations, which will operate from March 31 to April 11. People
who believe they did not receive a census form, believe they
were not included on the census questionnaire returned by their
household, or have no usual address on census day will be able
to pick up a Be-Counted questionnaire.
The staff have also identified over 27,000 questionnaire
assistance centers, which will operate from today through mid-
April and will provide assistance to individuals who might have
difficulty completing the questionnaire because of language or
other barriers. Sites include, but are not limited to,
community and civic centers, banks, libraries, schools, grocery
stores, health centers, and places of worship.
We have selected and trained paid clerks, and we are
seeking additional volunteers. We use our paid clerks based on
their ability to provide appropriate language or literacy
assistance in communities that need this type of support. All
individuals providing assistance at questionnaire assistance
centers, whether paid or voluntary, have been sworn to protect
the confidentiality of individual information on the
questionnaires.
The Census Bureau was selective in training staff to serve
as Be-Counted clerks in the local Census offices. These clerks
will conduct advance visits to all sites to ensure their
suitability, set up the sites, resupply forms as necessary and
close down the sites at the end of the operation.
Unlike questionnaire assistance centers, the Be-Counted
sites are not staffed. They simply are places where people can
pick up a form and mail it back.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I repeat at this point, 24
days from census day, I am aware of no serious problem that
would put the census at risk. The next month is crucial. I
cannot promise you that serious problems will not occur; I can
only promise to keep you informed. The timing was just right.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]
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Mr. Miller. We are going to recess around 2.
Your statement just outlines how complex and huge an
undertaking the decennial census is. It is impressive that you
and the people at the Census Bureau are able to pull it all
together as we get close to the official census date.
But to begin with, I mentioned in my opening statement this
question of access. This has been a concern and problem from
day 1, since I got involved over 2 years ago, with the
formation of this committee, and we have talked about it. I
brought it up last week in Appropriations with Secretary Daily.
As we begin to approach some very critical parts of the
whole census over these next several months, I think we need to
make sure we have complete access to the information that is
needed to do what is lawfully required of our oversight
responsibilities. We are talking about $7 billion of taxpayers'
money and something that obviously has a major impact on this
whole country for the next decade.
I come from the private sector. I was never in government
before, and I used this analogy sometimes of being the auditor.
I see these reports coming out of here on guidelines that the
Bureau is giving us, and to me, if I was a private auditor and
doing this in the private sector, I would quit the job. It
would not be even acceptable. It would be totally unacceptable
under any CPA guidelines.
I think it is almost arrogant the way this is written,
because it is telling us and the other oversight agencies of
government, which include the Inspector General--and I haven't
really talked directly with the Inspector General Office, the
Census Monitoring Board, the General Accounting Office--what we
can and can't do. And I thought we were the elected
Representatives of government.
I know you are appointed by the President, but we do have
legal responsibility for oversight; and we also, because of the
$7 billion, have a responsibility to see that. The Monitoring
Board was created in cooperation with the President to have the
responsibility, and as you know, we are talking about maybe 40
some people, total, in all four agencies that are going to be
involved in the census issue. And we are talking about 520
offices and hundreds of thousands of employees at the Bureau.
So I am concerned about the access. I am concerned about
the delaying tactics that have been used over the past year or
so--and I know there are Commerce Department political
operatives that kind of hold things up. We always get different
excuses. This can't continue, and when we get into the critical
time in the summer, it is going to be important that we have
access.
Let me give you one illustration. One of things that people
talk about, and I don't believe this is true, but I am saying
this comes out, is that there is going to be an interest in not
being successful with the full enumeration so we have to use
adjustment. I think you are too professional and so is the
Bureau, but there are those that say they are going to not do a
very good job in the enumeration so we have to do an adjusted
census. And the problem is, when you get to closeout, I think
it was 16 weeks in 1990, you are going to do it in 10 weeks and
you will have an extra 10 million people to do it. You can
close out in 10 weeks, just the quality of data may be not that
good; you might or might not know that.
The question is, with our oversight responsibility, we want
to make sure, for example, that when we do a closeout, it is
done right. If we have to give 2 weeks' notice in every case
because you require it, how can we do the oversight? Should we
just, say, trust you with $7 billion?
I am concerned. The General Accounting Office has spoken to
me about it. The person, in fact, who was going to be
testifying next week will raise the question. He has never had
this type of experience in his 17 years in the General
Accounting Office. So I think we need to have it clarified,
what we can and can't do. We certainly don't want to interfere
with what is operating.
But some of these--for example, you have to have a regional
director or an assistant regional Census manager accompanying
anybody that shows up at an office? You are going to waste
everybody's valuable time when somebody wants to stop in to see
you.
I think you have created a bureaucratic mess with these
rules and regulations. I think you should be open. If you want
to be transparent, you need to make it available. Sometimes it
takes us weeks to get information. So we are going to have a
hearing on it in a couple of weeks.
I would also like to recommend that you or someone senior
in the decennial census have a meeting with all four agencies
involved, which would include the Monitoring Board, the
Inspector General, and GAO to make sure that we all understand
and can work this out.
And now you may please respond.
Mr. Prewitt. Thank you.
The closeout process for the moment, I would like to
address those. But I will not make those direct. Let's talk
first about the----
Mr. Miller. I am just using that as an illustration.
Mr. Prewitt. Let us talk first about it. I am only going to
mention that because some of the facts you used about 1990 were
not exactly correct. I would like to make the record right, but
I would like to address the access issue as best I can in a few
moments. Since I became Director in late October, there have
been approximately 10--depending on how you count, 10 or so
major GAO reports. And I happen to have most of them here with
me, and in not a single one of those reports, Chairman Miller,
is there any expression of concern about the cooperation of the
Census Bureau.
It has never been put in a report. Indeed, based on my
experiences, perhaps, the most intense and detailed
investigation of the Census Bureau in its history was in August
of last year, when we were in the middle of trying to put our
operations together--as you know, I had to write you about it.
I was so concerned about the amount of time it was taking of
our senior management. If the GAO investigation continued at
that level, it could indeed put the census at risk.
But speaking of cooperation, let me read you a sentence
from that report.
We provided a draft of this report to the Department of
Commerce for comment. As requested, the Director of the Bureau
of the Census provided written comments on behalf of the
Department in 2 days. This was a thick report. We appreciate
the Bureau's rapid response to the draft and its overall
cooperation and timely response to our data requests.
In this entire stack of reports, that is the only place at
which the GAO addressed the issue of cooperativeness with its
agencies and investigations. And it was a completely positive
statement, not a negative statement. Yet now we are told by the
same agency that we have an unusually poor record of
cooperation.
Let me say one other thing about this report. They focus on
preparations, as they should have, in the period leading up to
the census; not a single one of them alerts us to an area in
which, in fact, we are ill prepared, that is, how to
simultaneously do a census and explain what we are doing in
real-time to our oversight agencies.
We have a huge number of requests for site visits in the
next 3 weeks. The Monitoring Board is only one of them. The GAO
reports have never said to us over the last 2 years, ``Look,
you better put in some extra staff just to deal with the
oversight apparatus.''
So if their intent was to help us prepare for the census,
the one thing they did not help us prepare for and didn't even
ever address was the question of how can you staff up in the
middle of a census for all of the oversight apparatus that is
going to come your way? I would have loved it if they would
have given us some kind of an advance warning on this.
Let us not talk just about the past. I would like to tell
you what GAO has asked for and what we are providing.
GAO has asked for our cost and progress system, which
reports on 55 operations at every level of geography and
operations. This includes, for example, the number of persons
recruited, the number of persons hired for each operation by
their preemployment status--employed, retired, including target
recruitment pools, such as Welfare to Work beneficiaries,
persons under special waivers for noncitizens, Federal
assistance annuitants, current Federal employees, recipients of
public housing assistance and any other waivers that may become
available to the Bureau, the number of employees quitting,
resigning, terminated, involuntarily separated, et cetera,
actual staff turnover rates, number of applicants in various
stages of hiring, and so forth. That is just under labor force
participation.
Then in our production system, this cost and progress data
includes total case load assumptions for each and every
questionnaire delivery operation, that is, update/leave, list/
enumerate, update/enumerate, urban update/leave, et cetera,
number of possible mailback responses for all questionnaire
deliveries, separate accounts for the number of mailout
undeliverables, initial total case load for nonresponse
followup, subsequent estimate of total NRFU--nonresponse
followup--case load, incorporating late mailback responses,
number of hours worked, training hours, overtime hours, total
earnings, number of employees receiving----
Mr. Miller. Excuse me. There is no question there are lots
of requests. You don't need to read every single item, we don't
have time. I understand.
Mr. Prewitt. I mean, I just started with this one.
Mr. Miller. You are welcome to do that, but I will tell
you, then we don't have--should you decide what oversight we
should have?
Mr. Prewitt. No, sir. I will turn to that question. I would
like to answer that question.
The data that they have requested, and that we are
providing we are providing in real-time, is a terabyte of
information, a terabyte. It is hard to know what a terabyte is
if you can't visualize it. It is the equivalent of 16,000 CD-
ROMs, or if the imagination is still focused on a paper record,
this is the Yellow Pages of the Washington, DC. A terabyte is
not 50 of these or 500 of these or 5 million of these, a
terabyte is 50 million of these. That is how much information
we are giving to GAO.
Now, if providing in real-time the equivalent of 50 million
phone books, or 16,000 CD-ROMs, is being uncooperative, I would
hate to think what the more cooperative agencies are providing
to the GAO.
But now let me address your straight question, whose job is
it to decide what oversight is? It is not mine. It is certainly
yours; it is the U.S. Congress'. I appreciate that. Obviously,
the Congress needs this information to discharge its oversight
responsibilities, that is, the terabyte of information in real-
time over the next 10 weeks.
But I have to pose the question to you, do you need it in
real-time on the assumption that somehow the census can
actually be managed on a daily basis by the U.S. Congress? For
example, in your opening comment----
Mr. Miller. I am well past my 5 minutes. I have gone over
10 minutes.
Mr. Prewitt. With permission, I said you addressed this at
some length----
Mr. Miller. Right, right.
Mr. Prewitt [continuing]. In your opening comment. You
addressed the error on the address letter. Now, do you want to
know about that in real-time in order to fix it? Because it
can't happen that way. You can't fix problems with a GAO
process. You can't manage the census that way.
You can exercise oversight. You can exercise whether we
have committed fraud or inefficiencies or corruption,
mismanagement of funds. But it is very hard for me to imagine
why you need a terabyte of information in real-time. We are
providing it, at some extra costs to us, to get it all to you
on time and to the GAO.
Mr. Miller. Our responsibility is concerning fraud. I
mean----
Mr. Prewitt. No, no. I am just saying that if the GAO's
task is to see if we have appropriately spent the taxpayer
dollars, they will be able to do that, because all of this
information is available. You know, Mr. Chairman, you said very
wisely--I thought very wisely, as a matter of fact--some time
ago that perhaps the job that I now hold is the job for a
general. And I took it seriously; I seriously did. And I often
reflected on that comment and asked myself, what would General
Schwarzkopf do under these circumstances? If the GAO were to do
a real-time audit of Desert Storm, to what purpose would that
have been done?
Let us say there was an auditor of an armed vehicle being
positioned on the Iraqi/Kuwait border, and the GAO auditor/
judge or the operator of that vehicle did not make a competent
reading of the GPS data; and so the auditor then said to this
operator, ``Look, I don't think you are putting this vehicle in
the right place.''
The operator knows it is in the right place because he
understands the larger strategy that is going on. He now has
the following choice, he has to stop and explain.
Mr. Miller. That is a crazy analogy you are using, to say
that we are--you know, it is like going to--I will tell you
what, we are using an awful lot of time. We just have a problem
here.
If it is real or perceived, it is a problem. If you want a
transparent census, we need to feel that the people who have
oversight responsibility, all four agencies of the government,
have access. That is all we are asking, and so----
Mr. Prewitt. Sir, a terabyte of information strikes me as a
lot of transparency.
Mr. Miller. I am telling you, a lot of people are
complaining to me, and I am listening to the complaints from
all the agencies. I haven't talked to the Inspector General,
but the other ones, they are saying there is a problem. We are
going to have this hearing. I hope you will meet with everybody
and see if there is a better way to open up, because we are
going to go through some critical times these next months if we
are going to be obstructing and delaying--I mean, what the GAO
is saying; you know, you have information, and then it takes
weeks to still get it.
Why are we--and I think it is just billed unnecessarily--
your staffs have built unnecessary barriers here; and it
ultimately goes down to the Commerce Department, it sounds
like, and then the politicians get involved. Anyway, we just
need to avoid this problem.
I will guarantee you--and Mrs. Maloney will come up and
defend you here in a minute. I will tell you Mr. Waxman and Mr.
Dingell would not have tolerated one bit of this when they were
chairmen.
Mr. Prewitt. We have to understand what 50 million phone
books full of data means if that is not--in real-time, if that
is not transparency, it is hard for me to imagine what is
transparency.
You, for example, quoted the fact that the Monitoring Board
says that we have 30 outstanding requests. That is not our
understanding. We have two outstanding requests. We get
requests from the Monitoring Board on a constant-flow basis.
There is always some outstanding by definition. I don't know
where that 30 comes from.
Mr. Miller. Actually, we will submit this for the record.
This is something that they gave me. These are not the only
outstanding ones. These are all the delays it takes to get
information, and it varies--refused data requests and such. We
have a problem. And are you denying there is a problem? I am
just telling you, this is going to affect the respect for the
census when we get through this process; and unless we feel we
have access to this information, everyone is going to be
suspect of it.
And I really--this really upset me when I read this
document, the arrogance of it, to say we cannot ever, unless we
have 2 weeks' notice; I have never had any agency tell
Congress--I mean, this is only my 8th year, and I don't do much
oversight, but I never had anyone tell me that I have to give 2
weeks. There isn't reason why you shouldn't. We should try in
every effort. But here it says it is absolutely that way.
Mr. Prewitt. Yes.
Mr. Miller. I just----
Mr. Prewitt. I apologize if the language was arrogant. My
recollection of that letter is that we sent it as early as we
could to try to create some sort of systematic way to
accommodate all of the requests that we are getting for site
visits, which is a large number of requests. The GAO--the
Monitoring Board letter in the next 20 days has, as we know----
Mr. Miller. You are going to have to fly in a regional
director to every one of those 1-hour visits, I guess; that is
what your policy is. That is a waste of your time and effort,
it sounds to me. That is what you are saying: You will either
have the regional director or the assistant regional Census
manager accompanying. It is all of these people. They are 1-
hour visits. That is a waste of your efficiency, I think.
Mr. Prewitt. We don't know what the visits are. We know
that in the past the people who have been asking us for visits,
we have had to stop the operation. We have had to set up
training systems. We have to do things, sir. We are actually
doing the census now. We are actually in the middle of it. As I
just said----
Mr. Miller. We have gone a little bit longer. I apologize
for the time.
Let me just ask you. We are going to have other people
besides these agencies testifying and find out more background
on this and what the legal requirements are so we have it
clarified. But will you arrange for a meeting with the four
different agencies involved, so they are all in the room
together--maybe you have done this--and see if we can get it
cleared up so that everybody feels that this is going to be a
transparent census?
You want a transparent census, I want a transparent census;
and let us see if we can get a better working relationship.
Mr. Prewitt. I would be absolutely delighted. I requested
that meeting. I requested that meeting some time ago from both
chairmen of the Monitoring Board. I never got an answer to that
letter. I wrote you a letter in August, saying I was worried
about this situation, and asked for a meeting. I did not get a
response to that letter. So we very much would welcome that
meeting.
Mr. Miller. Let us jointly write a letter to them all----
Mr. Prewitt. Good, good.
Mr. Miller [continuing]. And say, let us have this meeting.
I mean, the minority and majority sides should be involved.
Both sides on the Monitoring Board should be involved, because
this perception is going to get more of a problem. It may not
be that real, but I think it is a real perception.
Mrs. Maloney, I apologize for taking so much time.
Mrs. Maloney. It seems to me that as the Director is
designing and implementing the most difficult part of the
census, he is not being criticized for the task of running an
appropriate and thorough census; he is being criticized for not
answering all of the questions about the job that everybody
seems to say he is doing all right and doing well.
And I just would like your cutoff, and I would like to hear
more about all of these requests that you are getting to answer
questions. Just to mention some that I am aware of, because I
read the reports--the GAO, very thoroughly questioning; the
Monitoring Board, they want 31 visits, what, in 2 weeks, 31
visits.
We weren't notified, but 31 visits they want, this
subcommittee--I see him regularly, every week at least at a
subcommittee meeting, it seems like--the National Academy of
Sciences and all of their committees, and the advisory
committees that you have set up, certainly the IGs from the
Commerce Department to name a few.
But you were cutoff when you were going through all of
these requests. And I would like to hear all of these requests
that you are getting to provide information on your job.
Sometimes, do you think, possibly they are trying to obstruct
your ability to do your job by demanding you to spend the
majority of your time answering questions about your job?
And I would like to ask about reinventing government. I
know that the Vice President--and I supported his efforts--went
out with a very aggressive campaign to cut back on the number
of people in government. We now have the smallest government we
have ever had, and possibly we might look at a new form of
structuring your office where you have a whole unit that does
nothing but answer questions.
Now, I must tell you some people think the census is you go
out and print a form at a Xerox place. You and I know, Dan,
this is highly complicated; I spend a lot of my time answering
questions to my colleagues in Congress. The census is an
important system. It is an important goal, and it is
complicated.
So I would really like you to put in the record and go
through everybody who is requesting all of this information.
And I would also like a report from you--I don't want to ask
for more paperwork, but I would like an estimate of how much of
your time and your major senior staff time has to go in to
answering questions.
We know many people work for the Census Bureau, Dan, but
only people in supervisory positions can answer some of these
questions, and so I would like a sense of how much of their
time--and is this constant demand for information impeding
their ability to get--as you said, as Dan said, we all say--the
most comprehensive, largest peacetime effort and mobilization
ever in our country, the greatest civic responsibility of every
citizen to be involved.
And I know that I see the outreach in my own community with
the Census bus and forms and everything else and my own mail
that came to me over the weekend. And I did an informal survey,
all of my staff and a lot of my friends got the form, so it
seems like the operations are moving forward. People aren't
criticizing the operations moving forward, but what we appear
to hear is a complaint that so many different entities are
asking questions, they aren't getting all of their detailed
questions answered, some of which may be repetitive and some of
which may impede the ability to do their job.
If all I had to do--if I had to respond every day to the
GAO, Monitoring Board, IGs, and not to mention every
politician, including myself, and yourself, who are constantly
asking questions, we couldn't get our job done.
So I would like to hear in the record how many different
groups are asking for information, how much information it is,
do you have the staff to respond to all of these questions. And
I would just like to give you as much time as you need to
explain what all of these requests are doing to your time and
your ability to oversee a very important function of the
Federal Government.
Mr. Prewitt. Yes, Congresswoman Maloney. If you will permit
me, I will start with an anecdote that came to mind as I was
listening to Chairman Miller's opening comment. Norman
Bourlaug, who got a Nobel Prize--he was an agronomist who was
based at a research station in Mexico during the Green
Revolution; Norman Bourlaug was a very, very important
scientist with respect to corn breeding. And the headquarters
used to send him requests all the time for information; and
Norman Bourlaug finally got frustrated and cabled back--that
was in the day of cables, in the 1950's--``Did you send me down
here to grow paper or to grow corn?''
I sometimes feel as if I had been sent to the Census Bureau
to produce reports, not to produce a census. And I am very
anxious about that, because we are in the middle of it now, and
I want to produce a census for this country, not just produce
endless reports and site visits.
Now, that is not an attack on oversight responsibilities.
That is simply a question of, is the oversight process supposed
to do real-time auditing and, if so, is that because the
oversight process can somehow manage the census?
By the time the auditors finish the work, come back, write
a report, give it to us for comments, we then comment, and it
comes down here. And then you have a hearing to tell me that we
should have done something differently in our recruitment
system, it is too late. We have already fixed that problem. If
we didn't fix it, we were in trouble. We are fixing problems
all day long, every day.
One of the problems you asked about is how much time. I
would estimate that in terms of our senior management time when
we get together to talk two or three times a week about where
we are, what the issues are, half of our time--and this is sort
of 9 or 10 people--half of our time is spent in conversations
about how to be responsive to the GAO, the IG, the
subcommittee, the National Academy, the advisory committees--at
least half of our time is spent on those issues. That is a lot
when you are actually doing a census.
Regarding your offer to put into the record the actual
documentation of the requests, let me assemble that
systematically, and I will provide that for the record.
Mrs. Maloney. Would you like to elaborate on all of the
requests that come into your office? I would just like to hear
about it. What is your day like? Do you go in there, you go to
work and you get a call that you need another report done?
I would like you to elaborate on all of these requests that
are coming in.
Mr. Prewitt. Surely.
I would say about a third of the day, a normal day--there
is no such thing as a normal day when you are actually doing
the census, about a third of the day are these brushfire
problems. For example, there are large numbers of Members of
the U.S. Congress who are concerned about whether they have
enough of something--enough offices, enough advertising, enough
recruitment, enough jobs, enough something in their districts.
So the phone bank and the letters will be coming in from
Members of Congress, and that is quite separate from official
oversight. That is one-on-one stuff. It is very time-consuming,
very time-consuming.
We tried to be very responsive to Congressman Ryan on one
issue that was in terms of senior personnel time, including
myself, other senior people, regional directors; I would say
the total man-hours that went into that letter could easily
have been 40, 50 hours. That was one constituent asking one
question, which turned out to be misframed; he wrote: ``I lost
6 weeks of salary.'' It turns out 6 weeks ago, he lost 1 week
of salary, which was made up the next week.
We get those all the time. We have to do as best we can and
respond to them. So let us say that is about a third of the
day, brush fires, not just congressional, all the other brush
fires, they are going out all over the country all the time,
all of these small things that come and go.
Then I would say about a third of the day is spent with the
official oversight process, one way or the other, either
getting materials ready for a hearing, getting materials ready
for a report, having conversations about what we ought to be
doing and not be doing, how do we handle--for example, let me
give you an example we just dealt with yesterday.
There are requests for the--all of the complete count
committees. There are about 9,000 complete count committees.
The complete count committees are not ours. They are
established by local mayors and local Governors. They are not
Census Bureau complete count committees.
By what authority do I share the list, with the contact
name, of these 9,000 committees to somebody who just asked me?
I don't know what the mailing is going to be to those people.
They didn't join up to be visited by the GAO or the IG; they
joined up to try to do a census. Nevertheless, we spent 1\1/2\
hours struggling with that issue just yesterday.
So there is about a third of the day that goes into that
kind of problem. And then I would think about a third of the
day actually goes into trying to manage the census, trying to
deal with the local Census offices that don't have--their
recruitment is below target. What are we going to do in those
offices? Do we move people and so forth.
So I would say that on a normal day close to a third of our
time is spent with the oversight apparatus, and it comes from a
large number of sources; and that is different from individual
congressional requests, because I don't think we put that in
the same category. These are just questions that are being
raised by Members of Congress, and by mayors; I put that in
there too.
The exciting thing about this census, and it is really very
exciting--I am very pleased to be here, quite honestly--a lot
of people think they own this census, a lot of people,
thousands of people, our partners, our mayors, our Governors,
Members of Congress, all think that they now sort of own this
census. That is very healthy for the society.
We are very excited to be running that kind of census. When
you share ownership, it creates lots of pressures on you. So
that is what it is. I will be happy to provide that more
systematically.
Mr. Miller. We can do a couple of rounds. Let me recognize
Mr. Ryan. We will come back and do a couple of rounds, if that
is all right.
Mr. Ryan.
Mr. Ryan. Actually, I was coming prepared to defend you
today, till I heard that one. Let me----
Mr. Prewitt. You are an honest man, Mr. Ryan. That won't
deter you at all.
Mr. Ryan. Let's clarify what happened in Racine, WI.
When a senior management person at your local Census office
in my district of Racine, WI, tells me that many employees
aren't getting their paychecks, and he sends me a letter to
that effect, and he is an official of the Census Bureau, I
think that is a very serious claim, and--I think that is a very
serious thing. I'm sorry it took you 50 man-hours to figure
that out. I don't know how long it takes you to figure those
things out, but that was a very legitimate question.
Mr. Prewitt. Surely. We took it legitimately.
Mr. Ryan. I would like to use a military anecdote if I may
for a second.
I had the pleasure and opportunity to have breakfast with
Colin Powell not too long ago, with a handful of other Members
of Congress, and he laid out for us what he calls the ``Powell
doctrine.'' The Powell doctrine, basically the lessons we
learned from the Vietnam War, is that politicians were running
the war, picking the bombing targets, and we had the whole
policy of incrementalism--the wrong way to do that.
What we learned in the Gulf war under the Powell doctrine
was, let the experts do it, let the experts run the war, let
the military experts who know how to do their jobs do those
jobs.
I think that is an appropriate anecdote for this situation.
And I really sympathize with what you are doing, and I think
you are the right person for the job.
But also we are all concerned about the census. Everybody
believes we have ownership in the census. This is the greatest
nonmilitary civic exercise we ever engage in here, so oversight
is critical; oversight is very important, and it is a
congressional responsibility to have oversight.
When we are told by members of the Census Bureau that
paychecks aren't getting mailed out, whether that is true or
not, we have to react and do oversight on those things, because
it is just around the corner. When we have calls and we are
finding out that we don't have enough people--in Wisconsin, we
have a very tight labor market; we need more people to fill out
the applications so that we can get the enumerators out there
when that happens. We are concerned about that. I have been on
TV for 3 weeks at home telling people, ``Call, call, call,
call, please, we need applications.''
Which leads me to my question, I have here the letter I got
in the mail about the census. And it is a letter from you
saying we need help hiring temporary workers throughout the
United States to help complete the census, call the local
Census office near you for more information, the phone number
is available from the directory assistance or on the Internet,
and then it lists your website.
I just wanted to ask you--and the complaint I have been
getting is; I am sure you have thought this through--I want to
see, why didn't you just put your 800 number in there instead
of asking people to dial up and pay 75 cents for directory
assistance.
I have been given your 800 number, I don't know it by
heart, I thought I did, but I have been giving your 800 number
all over the place. Why didn't you just throw the 800 number
there, which is a national number? It doesn't matter where you
are, you can call it, and then they route you to your local
Census office so you can get the information on how you fill
out that application.
That extra expense and extra required action, I am fearful
is going to delay people or just stop people from actually
inquiring.
Mr. Prewitt. No. Congressman Ryan, that is a completely
legitimate question. And I didn't--by the way, if I can return
to the first part, I thought your question was legitimate; that
is why we took it so seriously. But sometimes those questions
actually are stimulated by a pretty little thing. The way it
got to you, it made it sound like a much bigger problem than it
turned out to be. We both found out that.
I don't think the question was inappropriate. I was simply
using that as a way to suggest the day is full of those kinds
of things, which, when we look hard at them, they turn out not
to amount to quite as much as what it appears.
Mr. Ryan. It is just a helpful suggestion, maybe you don't
need to have a manager for all of these site visits. I just
actually popped into the local Census office and just walked
around and talked to people, asked them how things were going.
When you responded to my question about this particular
instance, you sent four people from your Chicago office to
drive up--to take half a day to meet me in my Racine office,
when all you could have done is just given me a call and said,
``Here is what has happened; it has been taken care of.'' That
took 4 of your man-hours for your regional people driving up
from Chicago to Racine, WI, to explain that everything is OK.
It was a nice meeting, but I thought it was kind of a waste
of time. So I hope you can consider--maybe you can do this in a
little faster, timely manner.
Mr. Prewitt. We do take requests from members of the
subcommittee very seriously.
To your other question, I think it is a fair question, the
phone number question. Before you got in the room, I did
mention that after the advance letter went out, we were getting
on that website, we were getting about 1,000--100,000 hits a
week--excuse me, 100,000 hits a day, and it jumped to 1 million
the next day. So it really has worked.
I honestly do not have a good explanation for your
question. Did we have the number at that time? I think we
simply didn't have the number when that letter was being----
Mr. Ryan. The 800 number?
Mr. Prewitt. Right. We have now got that number everywhere
where we can have it; it is 1-888-325-7733. If everyone is
listening and they want a census job, that is the number, 1-
888-325-7733.
I think we simply did not have it. We did not want to route
them directly to local offices, because you can't do that in a
letter very well because this is a mass mailing. I think that
is the simple explanation.
Mr. Ryan. When you went to print, you didn't have the 800
number?
Mr. Prewitt. That is correct.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6613.020
Mr. Ryan. OK. I think we have a vote, so I will just yield
back my time.
Mr. Miller. OK. We will take a recess. We have three votes.
I am guessing we will be back in 20 minutes or so. We will
stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Miller. We will have the committee reconvene.
Mrs. Maloney is on her way back, but rather than taking up
time, let us go ahead and continue. I have some more questions.
Also in our audience here today is Dr. Barbara Bryant, one
of your predecessors, who was sitting in the exact seat exactly
10 years ago. That was before my time involved in Congress.
So we are glad you could come as an observer. She has
testified as a witness before, since we had the subcommittee
recreated.
Let me switch over to the subject of the prenotification
letter which we talked about and get some more clarification.
There are two problems with--the single-digit problem. And the
other problem--and we are get getting calls into office--is
this issue about--I think there was in an article in the
Washington Post that said they wish you had put in an extra
sentence in English on the bottom of the letter. My neighbor
next door back in Bradenton called me before I flew back up
here yesterday, ``What is this about?'' People are confused
about the envelope.
So, again, I don't think it is going to affect the end
result. But it is just a perception problem again.
Before you came on board, we had a debate on the issue of
the second mailing, which--I mean, that was a decision before
your arrival here that was tested in the dress rehearsal. It
showed, I think, a 7 to 15 percent increase in response. But
the decision was made. We had expressed our opinion that it
should go through the second mailing, because this
prenotification was going to solve the problem.
Was that ever pretested, the prenotification, as comparable
to the second questionnaire? Do you know?
Mr. Prewitt. As follows, Mr. Miller----
Mr. Miller. What kind of response are you expecting the
prenotification will help?
Mr. Prewitt. Exactly. The prenotification letter was
pretested back in the early 1990's as part of the package; that
is, the so-called three mailing package; that is, the
prenotification letter, then the form and then the postcard
followup.
And based upon those tests, we estimated that response rate
could be affected by as much as 6 percent. Most of that, it
turns out, is attributable to the postcard reminder. You get
the biggest bump from that.
The questionnaire bump has to do with the fact that it is
more user friendly. There is obviously going to be a
questionnaire, irrespective, but making a more user-friendly
questionnaire, we thought would increase it. So the
prenotification letter, it was our estimate that it would
increase by perhaps as much as 2 percent, somewhere between
1\1/2\ and 2 percent response rate.
Mr. Miller. That was for the prenotification letter 1\1/2\
to 2 percent?
Mr. Prewitt. Yes.
Mr. Miller. How about the post-questionnaire card, as a
postcard?
Mr. Prewitt. The postcard, which is basically a thank-you
reminder, we estimated could be as high as 3 percent. So the
total package was a 6 percent bump in response rate. Indeed, at
that time we were estimating the response rate to be about 55
percent based upon our modeling of the demography and other
response rates. And it was that combination of three things, a)
notification letter, b) a user-friendly questionnaire, and c) a
reminder postcard, that moved us from 55 to 61 percent.
Mr. Miller. This single-digit problem, it doesn't sound too
big because it is a single digit, except for 120 times. The
problem is really a quality check problem, I think. How did
this stage--can you explain how the quality check did not work
and what other quality checks are in place to make sure this
doesn't happen again?
Mr. Prewitt. Yes, sir.
The quality check process worked right. The flaw was the
specification in the quality process.
Here is what happened: We ran our test deck on the advance
letter. And it tested out exactly correctly; that is, all
features of the test letter tested out, including the address
and so forth. Sometime between that test deck and the
production run, we were still negotiating about some of the
language text.
We were in very active conversation with our advisory
committee with respect to language. And under their urging, we
made some modifications in the language. What that meant is,
you opened up the software. Now the software that got opened up
was simply the text file software, not the address software, so
we presumed. And so, after the software was closed and the
production run started, we then focused upon those things which
we thought might have changed, i.e., if there was any problem
in the language translation.
The other thing we focused on, we actually do approximately
200 cases every 4 hours of all of our production runs, and we
pull those cases out, batches of them, send them to
Jeffersonville, and they run through separate quality control
processes.
The quality control processes in Jeffersonville were
focused exclusively on the parts of the address which were
operational. We were very concerned that the bar code matched
front and back, and that the bar code that we had matched the
address that the Post Office had as its mailing address. All of
those things tested out perfectly.
And the mistake in our quality check is that there simply
wasn't a provision in the quality check to go back and look at
something which was not operational, except for the language
part. We went back and relooked at all the language part to
make sure it was all right.
And it was simply--it wasn't a failure of the quality
control. It was a failure of the prespecification, not to
respect that particular data field.
Mr. Miller. But it was basically a failure in designing the
quality check then?
Mr. Prewitt. In that sense, yes, sir.
Mr. Miller. Right. Because there should have been another
quality check that caught that.
Mr. Prewitt. Of that field.
Mr. Miller. That is where the problem----
Mr. Prewitt. It was a specification rather than a failure
of the process itself. The process worked the way it was
specified.
Mr. Miller. The specifications were wrong.
Mrs. Maloney, we went ahead and started, knowing you were
right on your way.
On this same issue, let me go over my time and we will even
it out here, this question of not putting a sentence at the end
of the letter saying in English what this was on the back side,
because people didn't know what the envelope was about unless
you could read any of those five languages and such. It was a
question of confusion.
I think the Washington Post said the Bureau wishes--admits
they should have done that.
Mr. Prewitt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Miller. Go ahead. That was maybe a quality check or
focus group; why couldn't we have caught that, I wonder.
Mr. Prewitt. That I would ascribe to a judgment error more
than a processing or a quality check error. And I can explain
it, but I don't intend to try to excuse it.
But the explanation is, quite honestly, that this is the
first operation that we have put into the census in 2000, which
was not pretested. And the reason for that is, after the dress
rehearsal, when we realized we could not do a targeted mailing
to different language groups, we converted the advance letter
from simply a prenotification letter to carry the second burden
of also being the mechanism by which you got the language form.
So it took on a second task.
And our attention on making sure it worked well for that
task was so intense and focused that, quite honestly, we lost
sight of the fact that it had a different task, which is the 80
percent of the American population that doesn't speak one of
these five languages, or the 90 percent or whatever.
So we were extremely focused upon the language dimension of
that letter, and so that is why I say it was a judgment error.
The letter was printed exactly the way we spec'd out. There is
no problem in the letter itself.
In retrospect, it certainly should have included a sentence
which said the envelope is for the people who want a language
form. The concern at that time--these letters are examined and
talked about and argued in focus groups and so forth, and the
concern at that time was, let us keep this letter as--again, as
clean as possible with respect to its task. And I think if we
had pretested it, we would have gotten some of the response
that we have now gotten with respect to the confusion, and we
would have then changed it.
But it was an operation that because of when it happened--
it happened after the dress rehearsal, and there simply was no
time to pretest it. I learned from that--and we had this
conversation last summer when we were talking about additional
operations. I learned from that that we simply should not put
something in unless it is absolutely mandatory because the
census is at risk. We should not put in operations which we
have been unable to field test because that is the way mistakes
get made in a process like this.
It was an error in judgment, not in process. It is again
regrettable. I think the only sort of saving grace or--not
saving grace, but the thing I would mention--we are trying to
track as best we can the kind of current attitudes of the
public with respect to the census. And we ran a survey, or some
partners on behalf of the Census Bureau ran a survey, over the
weekend just as the letter was coming out. The level of
awareness is very high, 89 percent of the American public is
saying they are aware of the census, and that is unprecedented
at this stage in the census.
Eighty-four percent can actually describe some of the
features of a census. It is not only just general awareness, it
is very, very high. And when you ask the people, are they going
to cooperate, those numbers are very, very high. That doesn't
mean it will happen, but at least it is very encouraging.
We have reason to believe--look, I make no excuse. I don't
want to sound like I am. On the other hand, the number of calls
that we have gotten and e-mail is well, well under a percent.
Almost any mass mailing generates at least 1 percent of people
that don't like it for one reason or another. So we don't yet
see this as serious.
Mr. Miller. Do you log in--we are getting calls in the
office. It is not large numbers, but other Members are calling
us about it.
Mr. Prewitt. Surely.
Mr. Miller. But do you log in the numbers throughout all
the----
Mr. Prewitt. Yes, certainly.
Mr. Miller. How much----
Mr. Prewitt. I have only logged in central headquarters.
Central headquarters in Suitland. I haven't logged in--they are
certainly occurring in the region as well. But I would say as
of last night when I checked on this, the central headquarters
was easily 200 e-mails and phone calls. So it could easily get
to a million. It could easily get to a percent.
Whether that will affect the census or not, it is hard to
say. The forms are on their way. Look, some of the forms are
already----
Mr. Miller. It is more of a public relations issue, it is a
second public relations issue on the first big thing. But the
advertising has gone--so that is really the earliest public
communication issue.
Mr. Prewitt. And all the partnership work, well over half a
million people have already participated in one of the road
tour events.
We have had a series of meetings with ministers lately. The
Census Sabbath idea is really catching. We think it will be
really big. It is a public relations embarrassment. I regret
it, again, as I did the digit problem.
But if I really believed that it was going to threaten the
census, I would be doing something, and I simply don't think it
is.
Mr. Miller. All right.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Dr. Prewitt, could you--what would you
recommend to respond to, really, the chairman's concern that he
is raising over wanting more oversight and more transparent
oversight? What would you recommend could be done that is not
going to interfere with the professionals doing their job, but
would address his concerns?
Mr. Prewitt. Well, I would like to say, both as a citizen,
as a political scientist, and now as a member of the executive
branch, I believe very strongly in the oversight
responsibilities of the U.S. Congress. I have no hesitancy
about that.
And I do think if you go back through the GAO reports, if
you go back through your own committee requests, if you even go
back looking at site requests, from subcommittee staff, from
Monitoring Board, to my knowledge, not a single request has not
in one way or the other been acceded to and responded to.
Site visits all took place all through the summer,
successfully. Many of them took a full day, they weren't 1-hour
visits. They took a full day. We accommodated all of them. We
have accommodated the Monitoring Board fully thus far.
So it is not any kind of a resistance to either site visits
or information flows or what have you. I think the concern I
have right now is the real-time nature of it, which is that
they need a lot of stuff right now, and right now is also when
we are doing the census.
And so I think my advice to Mr. Miller would be, indeed,
the advice he gave to me, which was in effect, I believe, it
would be very effective to have the four key agencies, the
subcommittee, the GAO, the IG and--all of those three
especially, and perhaps the NAS that is less central to this
conversation, convene quickly.
For example, I am in a bit of a bind, we actually have
already, we think, worked out with your subcommittee staff
requests for site visits, but we haven't worked it out yet with
the Monitoring Board.
Indeed, I just had during the break a conversation with
Chris Mihm from the GAO, and he believes that we are
practically there with respect to an understanding of what they
need. So there is some sort of disjuncture between the
commentary and the headway we think we have made.
But I am now in a bind because I think you are right, it
will be very useful to all get in the room together and try to
work out a strategy for the next period. In the meantime, I
have a letter from Mr. Blackwell, who simply rejects our
guidelines. Those are guidelines; they are not rules. And I am
very sorry if the language appeared to be arrogant, I really do
apologize for that, but they were guidelines to help us do
this.
These are guidelines, by the way, that affect only the
people actually doing operations. They are not the guidelines
for coming to Suitland. They are not the guidelines for getting
data. They are only guidelines affecting people who are doing
something, training or recruiting or delivering forms or
checking in forms.
And I really cannot have those peoples' schedules disrupted
without some sort of warning, some sort of preparation for
that. I think if you brought me back here in 2 or 3 weeks and
we were having a serious operational problem, because we spent
so much time dealing with people who needed to be visiting us
and oversighting and so forth, then it would not be a very
happy hearing.
So I think my advice, Congresswoman Maloney, is to have the
meeting as quickly as we can, that Congressman Miller
recommended, and try to have that in such a way, by the time
you have a hearing on the 23rd, there will be no questions
about transparency. Because I really do not think there are
questions about transparency; I think there are questions about
whether you can do a real-time audit of an operation that is as
complicated as census 2000.
Mrs. Maloney. In terms of oversight, Mr. Chairman, I would
like to hear from the Monitoring Board, both sides. What is it
they are looking for and what are they doing? I think it would
be appropriate that we not only have the GAO in to report to us
and Mr. Prewitt to report to us, but the Monitoring Board,
which we funded quite generously, if I recall. What are they
doing?
What I think is interesting in all of this oversight--and
it continues and I believe in oversight--that none of it has
focused on any, ``major problem,'' nor has it found any,
``major problem.'' It has just been a review and a report on
the census that seems to be going forward, and in the process
that it was supposed to do.
And I would just like to focus on some good news for a
while. I know that last year at about this time we had just had
a Supreme Court ruling; we were in a partisan fight over the
funding of the census. And, quite frankly, now we are in a very
positive framework. We have the funding. We have mailings that
are going out, what I received, my staff received, that the
advertising campaign is going forward. I think the new vans are
an incredibly positive addition to the outreach to the
community. I think they are very effective. You could use more
of them.
Could you just give us some good news of what is happening
at the Census Bureau? Can you just tell us some good projects
that are happening and some good news about what is happening?
Mr. Prewitt. Well, as you said, the promotional activity is
really very well advanced. I think the number of school kits,
for example, which are out there, about 1.5 million--as I said,
about half a million people have already visited the road van
tour, that is, visited, done something, interacted with the
van, not just seen it.
I just shared with you some survey data, where I want to
make sure I said it right: 85 percent had seen or heard about
the census and had some reasonable level of information about
it; and about 86-87 percent said they would definitely or
probably return the census form.
There is a residual 4 or 5 percent who are saying no. A
census is always about the last 5 percent, always about the
last 5 percent. Whether it is a problem with recruitment,
whether it is a problem with the response rate, whether it is a
problem with any operations, it is always the last 5 percent
that is the challenge for a census, which has to go to 100
percent.
Nevertheless, I am very gratified and encouraged by the
level of public attention and positive attention that the
census has already received.
Most importantly--and I will return to my written testimony
here--the issues that we deal with all day long, everyday, from
bomb threats to public relations problems, to local Census
offices where we need to improve our recruitment rate, all of
those are manageable problems.
We have yet to hit a problem that is going to, as I say,
somehow put the census at risk. It may happen tomorrow. But as
I sit here today, we have not hit that problem. I think we are
poised to have a very successful census, a higher-than-expected
response rate. It doesn't mean we will get 100 percent response
rate, of course.
And to go back to Chairman Miller's comment, if I could,
about nonresponse followup, obviously, if we have a higher-
than-expected response rate, it is going to help us enormously
in the workload during nonresponse followup.
To go back to the 1990 numbers, my recollection is that we
planned nonresponse followup for 6 weeks, not 10 weeks; in
certain offices it took 16 weeks, but the actual plan was only
for 6 weeks. So we actually have added 4 weeks to nonresponse
followup in the 2000 design from 1990, a longer period. And as
I have testified before, Mr. Miller, we will keep counting
until we have exhausted our procedures. And if that takes all
summer, we will count all summer. We will count until we have
exhausted our procedures.
I appreciate that that is not your view; the one that you
quoted, I really do appreciate it is not your view. I really do
appreciate that that view is out there. But I don't think that
a lot of site visits in March are going to make people feel
better--the only way we can prove that is by doing it, come the
end of June and the early part of July. We have got to prove it
by simply doing it, and we will do it.
Mrs. Maloney. Earlier you made mention--and both of us have
commented, and I must compliment the chairman for his really
very sound statements on the official census mailing that
mimicked, it was a fundraising letter for the Southeast Legal
Foundation. It was mimicked, and it actually looked to me like
an official mailing.
And I really want to know, do you think more of these type
of shenanigans will take place, and how disruptive are they to
the official census?
Mr. Prewitt. It is very hard for me to anticipate. You
didn't ask me, but I will answer this question anyway--what
keeps me up awake at night? It is not recruitment. What keeps
me awake at night is some public event which confuses the
American people seriously about the census.
As I cited in my testimony, if a hacker broke in not to the
census, but to some other government file and suddenly the
American people really did believe that government information
was not protected, that would hurt us seriously for that in the
next 2 or 3 days.
I will give you another example. We learned just yesterday
that another mailing, a large mailing, a large mass mailing has
the same digit problem as the one that we experienced. And so I
woke up this morning shaking that somehow the story would be
told that the Census Bureau had sold its mailing list, how else
could this mistake happen again?
Clearly, that is a complete falsehood.
Those are the things that make me anxious. A public story
that I know to be wrong, but happens at just the wrong moment,
and we can't get it fixed: I am much more frightened of that
kind of event or outcome and natural disasters, of course, than
I am right now about any of our operations. Our operations are
on schedule, on track, on budget.
Mrs. Maloney. You may not have any information on this, but
if you do, I am curious about how recruitment compares to 1990,
when we had a much weaker economy. Do you have any comparison
as to how recruitment is going now, compared to when we had
more unemployed people?
Mr. Prewitt. I start by reminding the committee that with
the active support of the U.S. Congress, very active, important
support of the U.S. Congress, we have front-loaded our
recruitment system. That is the huge change from 1990. In 1990
it wasn't that our rates were so bad, it is that you have high-
level attrition, and then you are scrambling to fill those
empty positions. By allowing us to front-load, bear in mind, we
are hiring two people for every one person we need. Now is that
a waste of money? No. If they all come to work and do the job,
we just get finished quicker. We will still put them to work.
But the attrition levels thus far in our early staffing of our
offices and so forth have been quite modest. They were modest
in the dress rehearsal. So I would say our overall recruitment
plan, as well as recruitment rate, is much, much more robust
than 1990.
Again, every day I say, ``Look, it is looking good, we are
at 70 percent or 74 percent.'' That doesn't mean that tomorrow
it won't go dry. You don't know how deep that well is. But
every day we get more calls, as I just said, a million hits to
our website just the day before yesterday.
So we think there is a large enough pool out there to
recruit. If we have to change wage rates in some areas or do
some other kinds of emergency action, we will do it.
Mr. Miller. Let me ask some more questions on this
recruitment issue.
As we both know, national numbers tell you one thing, but
it is really a very local issue. What happens in Bradenton, FL,
my own home, versus Manhattan--you can't transfer the
enumerators from Manhattan to Bradenton. They might want to
come to Bradenton, it is a beautiful area. You have been there,
a little Chamber of Commerce plug there.
So based on news, the media reports and such about the
different areas, there are articles here in the city of
Washington, as I mentioned, and such and in New York City.
What percentage of the 520 offices are having problems? And
can you give us a description of what those are? Are there any
common characteristics, ones that are having problems and such?
Mr. Prewitt. Yes. As of March 1st--no, sorry, March 3rd, so
this is fairly recent data, we have a four-layer classification
system when we are looking at local recruitment, with green
being we feel good, we are really close to target; yellow being
we have got to pay a little bit more attention; orange being
nervous making; and red being take emergency action.
As of March 3rd, we had five LCOs in our emergency action;
that is in our red category. That is, of course, less than 1
percent. It doesn't make them insignificant.
As I say, the problem of a census is always that last 5
percent. But the good thing about those five cases is that they
are scattered. It is not like they are all in Atlanta or they
are all in New York; they are all scattered. In fact, I don't
think New York has one of these five.
One or two of the five are much less of a problem than what
they appear to be. For example, one of them is the LCO in the
near north side of Chicago. Now, that LCO covers an area which
is actually going to have a higher response rate than the city
of Chicago, but it is targeted to have the same response rate
as the rest of the city because we didn't break them out in
anything like that level of detail. Even though it appears in
red, we don't believe it is a red, but we are treating it as
one, nevertheless.
Then there are about 17 percent--well, let me say, all
together, about 30 percent are in the yellow-orange category,
where we do believe we have to take exceptional action, and
that includes everything from sending out expertise to doing
more advertising and so forth. These numbers fluctuate every
week. Some move up and some move down, because that target is
still climbing.
So you are actually right, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, you can
get a big national picture that looks very good, 74 percent, we
only need 70 at this stage, but there is variation around that,
and you have got a tail. You have got a small number of cases
which are problems, and some of those get picked up in the
press--some of them incorrectly, by the way, I have to say;
sometimes the press being used by our local recruitment people
to tell a more frightening story than actually exists in our
numbers in order to generate a public response.
We found two or three cases of that. We weren't
particularly happy about it, but nevertheless we understand
from a local level why they did it.
And I don't mean, again, to paint a rosy picture. But of
the things that worry me right now--and I would not have known
this a month ago. I would not have known a month ago that I
could sit here today and say now that we are into it, 73,000
people are out there distributing the questionnaires, but that
the operation that has to be staffed is staffed.
We fully staffed Alaska on schedule. I believe we will
fully staff nonresponse followup on schedule.
Mr. Miller. How about these hard-to-count areas? Are your
staffings doing OK?
Mr. Prewitt. The pattern is not staffing. The near north
side is not a hard-to-count area. The pattern is not
disproportionately in the hard-to-count areas.
Mr. Miller. In the last question you mentioned front-
loading--this one article was saying they have to call 10
people on the approved list before--you only get 1 out of 10,
and the question concerns the shelf life of this applicant
pool.
Explain to me the process. I mean, I have heard this:
People take the test, they get accepted, but you really don't
need them; and then you may not even call them for 2 months,
and they don't know.
How are we keeping in touch with these people, letting them
know they are in the pool?
Mr. Prewitt. It is a serious problem, as a matter of fact.
We think of this recruitment pool the same way you might think
of a military draft. You draft everyone, but you don't call
everyone. But when you are going to war, you don't know for
sure how many you are going to need and when you are going to
need them. You want the pool of draftees in place. Well, what
we have done is created a very large pool of draftees, in
effect.
It certainly goes stale. We do make calls, people say, no,
I have already taken a different job and so forth. So our
expected ratio is only 1 out of 5; that is, we want a
recruitment pool of, in fact, even less than 1 out of 5, 1 out
of 6, a recruitment pool of 2.4 million for about half a
million jobs. So roughly a 5-to-1 ratio.
So that is a pretty high ratio, as a matter of fact. I
mean, there has got to be an awful lot of decay of that pool
before we get down to having none or having fewer than 500,000.
I saw that same story, as a matter of fact, 1 out of 10.
That really did surprise me. That doesn't mean it did not
happen, but that is not a pattern, that we are only getting 1
out of 10 of our calls when we actually call people.
The other issue you addressed is the issue of keeping in
touch with them. We don't. It would just be prohibitively
expensive to always be writing them and saying are you still
available, are you still available, and then they get angry at
us because we haven't called them. There are unhappy people out
there who said, ``I took the test; I passed it. They say they
want jobs. They continue to advertise, yet they don't call
me.''
We explain that when people take the test. I have the
materials here which say exactly what we say to them, and not
everyone internalizes that. And they read the ad and they say,
why don't they call me. That is an issue, but there is not much
we can do about it.
When we need to have them there is on April 19th. We needed
them on March 1st to do the training for update leave; they
were there. We will need them on April 19th when we start
nonresponse followup. As we get closer to nonresponse followup,
going to the response rate issue, if the response rate is at
our 61 target, we are going to need all half million of them.
We will start earlier than the 19th with some kind of reminder
system to make sure that they are going to be there.
Mr. Miller. They are going through training now?
Mr. Prewitt. No, the update/leave people went to training.
Mr. Miller. The update/leave people went to training.
How long ago would it be that some of these people took the
test? Does it go back to last year?
Mr. Prewitt. The testing really didn't much start until
January.
Mr. Miller. Some may have taken the test in January and got
approved in January and then----
Mr. Prewitt. Maybe 6 months before we call them.
Mr. Miller. It could be as much as 6 months?
Mr. Prewitt. Yes. Now, a lot of the people who did the
early testing, of course, were people who were brought into our
office to work. And we did staff up our offices and, of course,
then update/leave, but only in those areas.
There are people who will have taken the test as long as 6
months before they are called. But we would not want to write
them and say we don't think we are not going to need you,
because we won't know that.
To go back to your other point, you are talking about
response rates which themselves are highly variable. You are
going to be 85 percent some places and 45 percent other places.
So we don't know for sure what those places are going to be.
We can't take a chance on telling someone we don't need
them until we know for sure where they will be needed.
Finally, on your question of moving people from New York to
Bradenton, as you well know, we very much want to recruit from
and use staff in the local community. As a last resort--we
probably wouldn't move that far, but as a last resort, we would
have to dip into our pool, where we had a deeper pool, to move
into areas where we had a shallower pool and pay the
transportation costs. We would still take care, of course, to
match up the cultural, linguistic, racial characteristics and
so forth, best as we could.
Mr. Miller. I have a couple more questions, but if you want
to go first.
Mrs. Maloney. Sure. The ``90 Plus Five'' program you
outlined in your testimony sounds like a very good idea, a
creative way of getting communities across the country involved
in boosting their response rates. And do you have any idea how
much money you can save if the program goals are met?
Could you just elaborate a little more on the ``90 Plus
Five'' program, another accomplishment I would say?
Mr. Prewitt. We obviously are very excited about that
program for two reasons, one of which is, it does have real
operational and cost savings implications, but also it is a
rallying cry. And I have been very, very pleased by the level
of adoption by mayors and Governors around the country. It
really is a rallying cry, the census as a civic event.
And it is working that way. I am going off tonight, as a
matter of fact, and I will be making, I think as many as six or
seven different stops in Virginia and North Carolina. Each one
of those is built around the ``90 Plus Five'' notion, with
mayors and complete count committees and other kinds of
promotional settings. If it were successful, that is, if we
actually added 5 percent to 1990, that is a 70 percent response
rate. That is a 9 percent increase from our current target.
Now, you have heard the number before, that each percentage
point is worth maybe as much as $25 million; that is a hard
number to estimate because it is not exactly linear, but that
is order of magnitude. So if we actually were to be that
successful, we would save many multiple millions of dollars for
the taxpayer if we could actually increase the response rate to
70 percent. It would also be good for the country along other
dimensions, of course, not just the money-saving dimension.
Mrs. Maloney. The Bureau conducted a four-site test, full-
load test of the data capture system during the week of
February 22nd. And the system was supposed to be fully
operational as of March 6, 2000, last Monday. Would you
describe the test for us? What was involved? What sorts of
equipment were tested? What type of personnel was engaged? What
is full load?
Mr. Prewitt. Yes. What that test does is bring up all four
of our data capture sites and test them as if they were now
pumping the material through at the rate at which we will have
to pump it through during the data capture period itself.
It is our final major test to the data capture system,
which is, as we know, a highly technical system. A lot of forms
come in wrinkled or smudge marked; all of the kinds of things
that can make it difficult to capture those data; and I can
only say that it all tested out just exactly the way we
expected it to.
Early on in an earlier test, in Pomona I believe it was,
our capture rate--our productivity rate was less than what we
wanted it to be. We retested that later in Phoenix, and it
moved up to expected levels; and then we retested it in our
four-site test, the entire system simultaneously.
It is right now--again, I keep wanting to go back. It
doesn't mean that tomorrow morning we won't learn something,
but as of right now, the data capture system is functioning. We
are now capturing data; we are recording stuff as it is coming
in. As I said, we have 500 forms already accepted over the
telephone, just in the first couple of days.
People are filing by Internet. I don't have the number on
that, but it certainly is working. I used it myself. So the
systems are functioning.
Mrs. Maloney. Both the chairman and I are very supportive
of Census in the Schools. In fact, we even introduced a
resolution supporting it in a bipartisan and joint way.
Could you give us a little more detail on how the program
is working? How many schools and teachers are involved? And
what percentage of the students do you estimate have been
reached and will be reaching their parents, and have the
materials been delivered? Has Scholastic performed well on
their contract? And can you just give us an overview of it?
Mr. Prewitt. Surely. Just quickly on Scholastic, as the
subcontractor on that thing, they performed very, very well, in
terms of--we thought in terms of curriculum--the construction
of the curriculum, the imaginative design and so forth.
There was a period where we were experiencing severe
backlogs in getting the materials to the school. We are now
past that backlog completely. We have now got a lag time of
only about 3 days before an order comes in and the kit goes
out.
I think that the number of kits now out are at 1\1/2\
million; that is a huge number of schools. The chairman and I
did a really quite attractive Census in the Schools event in
his district with very sophisticated kids. I must have done 15
or 20 of them already, about half of them with Members of
Congress.
For me, they have been some of the highlights of the census
period. I think it is going to be one of the most important
things. Look, the kids are really good Ambassadors for the
census. And if they go home with this message, then we are
going to get a higher response rate and especially we--as you
know, we targeted the hard-to-count areas. We are 100 percent
in all of those areas. We are obviously not 100 percent across
the entire country, but we are 100 percent in the hard-to-count
areas, which is roughly 40 percent of the schools, which is how
we calculated that. So we are feeling very good about that
program.
Mrs. Maloney. My time is up.
Mr. Miller. OK. You mentioned Census in the Schools. I did
another one recently in Venice, FL, in an elementary school;
and I had all the third, fourth and fifth grades come in the
cafeteria, and they brought a pencil. And I talked, and we had
the map that you make available; and they had two questions
that I had to help the students with and--in particular, it
makes me think about, because you had to list who else was in
your household.
The one young boy says, ``Do I count my dog?'' I can answer
that.
The other one was more difficult, and this is the type of
questions you have: The child lives with the mother 3 days a
week and the father 4 days a week, and the next week is just
reversed; ``Who do I get counted with?'' Those are some of the
questions. And the mother and father may not talk well.
So there are a lot of challenges you are very aware of, but
it just came up in that particular hearing.
Mrs. Maloney just brought up the Data Capture System. I
know GAO considers that one of the great concerns right now,
and they will be testifying again next week. I don't know their
latest feeling on it. When the test was run here in February,
did it--was it the entire system from when the forms come out
of the trucks and load it up and all the way through? Are you
comfortable that the data capture system is going to work?
Hopefully, Mrs. Maloney and I can make a trip to one of
them during the peak of it and get a chance to see it in
operation, because it has to be amazing to see that volume of
operation.
Mr. Prewitt. Could I just take an extra 2 minutes and ask
John Thompson to say a word. He is much more familiar with that
test than I am.
Mr. Miller. Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. What we did was, we ran about 2.2 million
forms per day through our scanners, and then we processed them
through the remainder of the process, including transmission of
the captured data to headquarters, simultaneously to make sure
that all sites worked. That was the workload--actually, the
million forms per data headquarters was the workload that we
anticipate that we have to meet for census 2000 processing. And
the test went very well.
The one thing we didn't test was the sorters. We didn't put
the questionnaires back into the envelopes. But we have tested
the sorters extensively, and we used them in 1990, so the
sorters haven't changed very much.
Mr. Miller. How about different handwriting and such?
Mr. Thompson. Yes, we tested a variety of different
handwritings to make sure that the optical character
recognition could catch it, including a variety of multiple
race responses.
Mr. Miller. Since C-SPAN is covering this, I might want to
make sure that you are introduced. You have been sitting behind
Dr. Prewitt in the past several hearings while he testified.
But you are the one with the responsibility and had the task
and you have been in charge of this.
When were you first appointed to this position?
Mr. Thompson. I believe I was appointed in 1998 to the
position I am currently in.
Mr. Miller. 1998. Tough job.
Mr. Thompson. I have been working on the census since----
Mr. Miller. You are a career.
Mr. Thompson [continuing]. Since 1980.
Mr. Miller. You have been with the Bureau for a long time.
I think this may be your first time to actually talk to the
committee. Thank you very much. It is a tough job, and you do a
fine job there.
I have one more question. It came up in your comments, and
I mentioned it too in the Salvation Army, the access to
facilities serving special populations such as the Salvation
Army. How much of a problem is that? Is there anything we can
do to move this along?
Mr. Prewitt. I appreciate that offer, Mr. Chairman.
No, I actually have been in very close touch with the
highest lieutenant colonel, I believe he is called, of the
Salvation Army. It is an understandable reluctance. Their
judgment is that when people are eating, that this is something
which is private. It is not a confidentiality issue. It is a
privacy issue.
And they are concerned that if the people who are actually
sitting in the dining halls and having their meals are being
enumerated that that will create a deterrent for them to come
in and get the meal.
The Salvation Army has been completely cooperative with
respect to counting all of their residents, all the people who
sleep there. But it is just this one issue of the people,
actually while they are eating their meal. So what we have
worked out with the Salvation Army is that these people do
queue, they do get into a line before they come into the dining
hall or the soup kitchen, and we will be able to count during
that period.
I should remind you that the primary count of the people
without conventional housing, as we say, or the homeless, is
based on where they sleep, not where they eat. Where they eat
is only an extra safety net in case we miss some people who
don't use any shelters. If the people are sheltered, we think
we will get them in the shelters.
These are really the people who don't go to the shelters,
but do come in and do get meals. We are still trying to count
the people who are sleeping in the park or sleeping on the
beach. We fear we will not get all of them. So this is an
extra, extra step. Indeed, we have to ask the people we are
counting, as they get the meal, have you already spent a night
in a shelter, because if they have, then we would not be
including them in the count.
So it is a very small problem, and we think we will solve
it.
Mr. Miller. Let me thank you for your assurance a few
minutes ago that you are going--as far as close out, you are
going to stay in the field as long as it is necessary to get
the possible count. I appreciate your public assurance of that.
Mrs. Maloney, do you have any final questions?
Mrs. Maloney. No. I have enjoyed this. I look forward to
the GAO reporting, and again would like to request that the
chairman call the Monitoring Board, both sides, to come in and
report to us.
I think that is a legitimate oversight of our body, too, to
look into what the Monitoring Board is doing.
Mr. Miller. I think we have a hearing tentatively scheduled
for the issue of this access. This is a serious--whether it is
real or perceived, it is certainly perceived; and I think we
need to get to the bottom of it.
I think I see Mr. Fred Asbell, who is with--at least on the
congressional side of the Monitoring Board here. I think Chris
Mihm was here earlier, certainly; I don't know if he still is.
There, he is there.
I know you all don't have your calendars, so you can't do
it today, but I almost like to say--to pin you all down. But if
you could get it put together as quickly as possible, I would
like to get this behind us.
I think we are getting to some critical stages, as you
know, going into the summer. We don't want to do anything to
interrupt or interfere with the census, but we do have a
responsibility to make sure that we know everything we can, and
a lot of it is gearing up for how do you do. A lot of times
this information is needed.
So I thank you for being here today.
On behalf of subcommittee, I would like to thank you for
appearing before us today. I ask unanimous consent that all
Members' and witnesses' written opening statements be included
in the record. Without objection, so ordered.
In case there are any additional questions that Members may
have for our witnesses, I ask unanimous consent for the record
to remain open for 2 weeks for Members to submit questions for
the record, and that witnesses submit written answers as soon
as practicable. I would like to submit the Census Monitoring
Board's congressional Members' request for oversight materials,
mentioned in my opening statement for the record. I am also
submitting the observation guidelines issued by the Census
Bureau for the record.
And, Mrs. Maloney, you had something which will be included
in the record. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Miller. Thank you again. And I will see you at the
Appropriations hearing in a couple of weeks. The meeting is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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follows:]
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