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Census
phone, web chat and email support to respondents in seven languages — per- formed well through some 5,000 phone calls, “with about 58 percent being han- dled by the customer service reps,” said Alexa Jones-Puthoff of the Decennial Census Management Division. In the headcount, officials expect CQA to handle 5.3 percent — or 7.5 million — respondents.
Within three months of the close of the 2017 tests, Census must begin pre- paring for its 2018 end-to-end tests, the true dress rehearsal for the decennial count.
To that end, between now and Sep- tember, officials plan to award three IT contracts: one for all mobile devices and services through 2020; another for fingerprinting and badging operations
through 2020; and a third for IT equip- ment, services and support for Census offices.
Lisa Blumerman, associate director for decennial census programs, said the contracts are on schedule, and she believes officials will award the field IT contract ahead of the September target date.
Other key IT objectives before the dress rehearsal include enhancing the Intelligent Postal Tracking System and the scalability of CEDCaP to central- ize data collection. The bureau also plans to finalize a memorandum of understanding with USPS by the end of May. Greg Hanks, assistant chief of geographic partnerships in the bureau’s Geography Division, said the agreement would outline the new
collaborative structure for mailing and delivery, data products and workforce services between the two agencies. At press time, that agreement was still in the works.
In another major change from the 2010 census, the bureau plans to lean more heavily on address records from state and local governments. To make it easier for those governments to par- ticipate, Census is providing its digital address list in a more standard format so local partners can help fill in the “2.6 million un-geocoded records” that remain unconfirmed in the bureau’s master address file, said Brian Timko, chief of the bureau’s Geography Divi- sion. The registration will be sent out in July, and training is scheduled to begin in October. n
Census director resigns as big count looms
JohnThompson announced his retirement, effective June 30, as director of the Census Bureau at a time when officials are set to make some big decisions about the 2020 headcount and deliver a long-awaited estimate that could show cost overruns.
The announcement came less than a week after a House appropriations
subcommittee hearing in which the bureau’s cost estimates were a central topic.
Phil Sparks, co-director of the watchdog group Census Project, told FCW that although he had expected Thompson to resign before year’s end, “given all the other things happening
with the Census Bureau, this probably couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
Now the bureau must navigate its lengthy to-do list with an acting leader until President DonaldTrump nominates and the Senate confirms a permanent replacement forThompson. The deputy director post at Census — a natural choice for acting director — is currently unfilled, but a Commerce Department spokesperson told FCW that
an acting director would be named in the coming days.
“Clearly, everybody’s got to urge...thatTrump speed up the nomination process,” Sparks said. “They’ve got
to get someone in there right now to be an advocate for the 2018 budget, which has got to be more than \[what is included inTrump’s so-called\] skinny budget.”
Census directors typically serve five-year terms. Thompson was sworn in in August 2013, but his term dated to Jan. 1, 2012, and expired at the end of 2016. The Obama administration extendedThompson’s term, and he was widely expected to depart the agency this year.
“With the Census Bureau well-positioned to meet the challenges of measuring our changing population
and economy and carrying out an innovative and accurate census in 2020, now is the right time for me topursuenewventures,” Thompson said in a statement. “My decision will allow Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the current administration sufficient time to put the proper leadership in place to guide the Census Bureau through the 2020 census.”
Thompson began working at Census in 1975
in the Statistical Methods Division. He served in an associate director role for the 2000 headcount then
left the bureau in 2002 to join the National Opinion Research Center. He returned when President Barack Obama nominated him to lead the bureau.
— Chase Gunter
26 June 2017 FCW.COM
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