From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Watchdog Report #19: Update on the Latest Phase of the 2010 Census Audio interview by GAO staff with Robert Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues Associated Publication Number: GAO-10-665T Released on: May 12, 2010 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the Government Accountability Office. It's May 12, 2010. Although this decade's census day has come and gone, the Census Bureau is still hard at work. Temporary census employees are following up with households that didn't return their census forms. Robert Goldenkoff, a director in GAO's strategic issues team, has been leading GAO's analysis of the census. GAO analyst Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Robert for an update on census issues. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] It's been about 6 months since we last checked in with you about the census. At what stage is the 2010 census currently? [ Robert Goldenkoff: ] The census is right now in the nonresponse followup effort. For those households that did not mail back their census forms—and there's about 48 million of them—the Census Bureau starting May 1st has at the street with over 600,000 enumerators to try and obtain responses from those people who have not responded. And it's really a critical phase of the census because one, it's massive. As I've said, it's over 600,000 enumerators, 48 million housing units. And it's really everyone's last opportunity to be included directly in the census. And then, also, it's an opportunity for the public to save taxpayer money. It's an opportunity to save money by people cooperating with the census enumerator when they come knocking on their doors. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are some of the complicating factors when it comes to the in-person followup process? [ Robert Goldenkoff: ] Well, first there's cooperation as I just mentioned. The second issue is gated communities. Sometimes it's difficult to access certain communities. Some neighborhoods just are dangerous to get in to. Some places, there's just concern about privacy. They don't want people from the government knocking on the doors. And so, this is why the Census Bureau, in order to address some of those issues, has shifted its advertising campaign to encouraging cooperation with census enumerators. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How prepared has GAO found the Census Bureau is for this nonresponse followup process? [ Robert Goldenkoff: ] The Census Bureau's preparedness was mixed. On the one hand, in terms of staffing levels and response rates, the Census Bureau was in good shape. On the other hand, a key IT system that is essential for the conductive nonresponse followup has not proven to be reliable. It's unstable. It continues to crash. The Census Bureau is really working very hard to make it reliable and get it up to the optimal performance levels. But there's still some issues out there and that can slow operations down, it could add cost as more people need to get hired to do the work that the automated system was supposed to do. And right now, that's what poses the biggest risk to the successful census. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What steps can the Census Bureau take in the near term to help ensure a more efficient and effective headcount in 2020? [ Robert Goldenkoff: ] Well, the current approach to taking the census is not fiscally sustainable. We have been reporting that now for awhile. For example, in 2000, it cost $70 to count each household. In 2010 the estimated cost is $112, and that's in 2010 dollars. If you look historically at the—since 1970, at the rate of cost increase, we might be looking at a $30 billion census come 2020. The 2010 census is estimated to cost around $14.7 billion. So, right now, to some extent the Census Bureau has already done this. They need to be developing evaluation programs that really get at this return on investment. Another thing that the Census Bureau can do is looking at new approaches for taking the census. For example, the use of administrative records—like tax records for example—use of the internet is another approach the Census Bureau can look at for 2020. The Census Bureau had a limited internet response options for 2000, they abandoned the internet response option for 2010. Well, maybe that or other forms of technology should be put out on the table. So, there're really a number of things that the Census Bureau should be doing to totally transform the approach of the census. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov, and be sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.