The 2000 census dress rehearsal scheduled to occur later this year will leave many design and operational issues unresolved and will raise further concerns about the high risk of a failed census, a new GAO report has found.
Dress rehearsal preparations are currently under way at three sites: Sacramento, Calif.; 11 counties in the Columbia, S.C., area; and Menominee County, Wis.
In February 1997, GAO designated the 2000 census as being at high risk for wasted expenditures and unsatisfactory results. After a recent review of the Census Bureau's progress, GAO concluded that the agency is still "facing the developmental and/or implementation challenges" as it did last year.
Those challenges include: creating a complete and accurate address list; increasing mail response rate through outreach and promotion; staffing census-taking operations; and carrying out sampling and estimation procedures.
"At a point in the census cycle when the bureau should be finalizing its approach, it instead finds itself revising some of its basic operational plans," Federal Management and Workforce Issues Director L. Nye Stevens told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee last week.
When the Census Bureau concluded that its original procedures for building the census address lists would not meet the agency's goal of being 99 percent accurate, the bureau revised its list procedures at an additional cost of $108.7 million. However, the new procedure of physically verifying the accuracy of the address files is not being used in the dress rehearsal.
Census outreach and promotion efforts are also lacking, GAO found. A critical component of the bureau's local outreach efforts are "complete count committees," which help mobilize grassroots promotion efforts, Stevens said.
However, at the time of the GAO's review only three counties in South Carolina had formed these committees.
The 2000 Census could also face staffing difficulties, GAO warned.
The bureau will need to recruit more than 2.6 million applicants to fill about 295,000 positions. But the agency's decision to focus on recruiting "moonlighters" and retirees was based on informal discussions with census workers during the 1995 census test. Those statistics and responses may not be comparable to the 2000 census situation, Stevens said.
The Census Bureau's controversial plan to use sampling techniques for nonresponding households in the 2000 census may also be challenging due to time constraints, the report said.
GAO did not make any recommendations in its report because plans for the dress rehearsal operations are generally complete.
"Time is running short," said Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who requested the GAO report. "And the obstacles that remain are alarming."
Rep. Dan Miller, Chairman of the House Census Subcommittee, said this is the third time GAO has warned of a failed census.
"That's three strikes from GAO in one year," he said. "My question to the census department is: 'Is anyone listening?' Or is the census Titanic going to hit the iceberg?"
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