The bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have asked GAO to assess preparations for the 2020 census, saying that recent hearings in the panel raised questions about the “ambitious modernization and automation program” the Census Bureau is undertaking.
That program, called Census Enterprise Data Collection and Processing, is designed to introduce an Internet-based response option, use mobile devices for field surveys and automate the management of field operations, among other changes.
However, a letter from the committee to GAO cited concerns raised in a June hearing about the amount of work still ahead, more than halfway through the period between the decennial headcounts. It said that as of that point, the agency had only “developed a schedule to develop a schedule” to put the needed systems in place.
An end-to-end test is scheduled for August 2017, the letter said, and “we are concerned about the Bureau’s ability to reengineer business processes and configure, integrate and test production-level systems in time for this critical test, especially in light of the short window that remains before the end-to-end test begins.”
GAO is to report on the implementation, including potential options in case the currently planned method fails testing, the security measures in place or planned, and other issues.
