The Republican leadership of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has issued a report citing weaknesses in both personnel and procedures of quality assurance at the Census Bureau data collection.
It said the Bureau’s lack of recordkeeping and deficient data collection system fostered an environment in which data falsification could occur. Controls vary from region to region and from case to case, including reliance on paper-based forms making it vulnerable to error and falsification, the report said.
It also said that: regional offices are responsible for both data collection and quality control, which often have conflicting objectives; mechanisms for data quality control are insufficient and could serve to discourage individuals from identifying and reporting suspected falsification; the primary data quality assurance checkremains in the original interviewer’s chain of command, effectively diminishing the objectivity of the process; there are no clear guidelines available to all Census employees for straightforward reporting of suspected falsification; and the case-tracking systems make it difficult or impossible to determine the full history and corresponding chain of custody of a particular case.
The report is here: http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Census-Report.pdf
