From: Census2000 &lt;Census2000(a)ccmc.org&gt; House Chairman Says Rush To Finish Put Quality of Count at Risk, But Census Director Says Charges Are Rush to Judgment Plus: Update on Census Operations Rep. Dan Miller (R-FL), chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Census, called for a review of counting operations in 15 Local Census Office areas where he said "improper or fraudulent procedures may have been employed." At a July 25 press conference in Washington, DC, Chairman Miller said a staff analysis of Census Bureau data tracking the progress of follow-up visits to households that did not mail back their census forms revealed "disturbing characteristics" that suggested "a rush to finish at the expense of quality." The congressman also cited complaints he said his office received from local census managers and enumerators who were concerned about pressure to finish their 'nonresponse follow-up' (NRFU) workloads early. Rep. Miller said his staff identified seven census offices where there were "early surges" in completing follow-up visits to unresponsive households: Hialeah, FL; Florence, AL; Las Vegas; Rapid City, SD; and East Los Angeles, Commerce, and Santa Ana, CA. The Census Bureau previously announced its decision to re-enumerate the entire NRFU caseload in Hialeah, after an investigation showed a failure to follow census procedures. Rep. Miller also identified nine census offices where he said "late surges" in completing the follow-up caseloads, as well as high rates of vacancy, deleted addresses, single-person households, and cases completed with 'proxy' data from neighbors or landlords, might indicate "fraud or irregularity": Atlanta West; Chicago Near North and Far South; Marion County, IN; Newark, NJ; Queens (NY) Northwest; New York Northeast; Newcastle, DE; and Philadelphia North. The chairman asked the Census Bureau to review the count in the 15 offices, which he noted were responsible for many hard-to-count areas with large African American, Latino, Asian, and American Indian populations. He also asked the Commerce Department's Inspector General to audit work in three of those offices - Chicago Near North, Atlanta West, and Queens Northwest -- to ensure that "proper quality controls" were implemented. Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt vigorously disputed Rep. Miller's conclusion that census activities were rushed or that enumerators were pressured to cut corners to complete their follow-up caseloads. In a telephone briefing for reporters on July 25 and a previously scheduled Washington, DC press briefing on July 26, the director said he was "disappointed" the congressional subcommittee did not give the Census Bureau an opportunity to review its analysis before releasing the findings publicly. Dr. Prewitt subsequently told members of the Census Bureau's seven advisory committees at their joint meeting on July 28 that he had completed his review of operations at all 15 offices and found "no need for any further action." He called the report prepared by Rep. Miller's staff "seriously flawed." The director said he was troubled that the "reputations of some of our best local offices have been impugned" by the charges of fraudulent or shoddy work. "This has been a good census," Dr. Prewitt said. "We are not going to let a series of unfounded charges take that away from us." Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the highest-ranking Democrat on the census subcommittee, said in a July 25th written statement that she "take[s] [Rep. Miller's] allegations very seriously" and that the Census Bureau should "investigate and correct" any failure to follow proper counting procedures. However, the congresswoman also questioned Chairman Miller's assertions of fraudulent activities, saying she had reviewed the same Census Bureau operational reports and had found "no evidence of widespread fraud." She also criticized the chairman for presenting his concerns "to the press first and the Census Bureau second." "What we have instead is the equivalent of 'Statistical McCarthyism' - allegations without proof," Rep. Maloney concluded. The congresswoman's district includes one of the census offices Rep. Miller cited as cause for concern. Dr. Prewitt said early last week that there was "no systemic evidence that quality was compromised" in any local offices other than Hialeah, Florida. "The evidence does not support calling this a rushed census," the director said, noting that the census "is done in a fishbowl," under the constant scrutiny of congressional committees, an eight-member Census Monitoring Board, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and the Inspector General. Dr. Prewitt previously ordered a re-enumeration of about 60,000 households in Hialeah, Florida, after finding systemic procedural irregularities. (The Census Bureau reduced the number of cases requiring re-enumeration from 71,000 to 60,000 after eliminating households that mailed back their census forms late.) At the advisory committee meeting later in the week, Dr. Prewitt said he found "no reason to doubt the quality of work" at the offices cited by Rep. Miller. "In each case, the increased pace of field work by dedicated census takers - either at the beginning or at the end of our door-to-door phase - is consistent with the staff resources applied to the situation," the director concluded. Responding to Chairman Miller's specific charges, Dr. Prewitt said the higher-than-expected mail response rate of 66 percent reduced the follow-up workload substantially, so that visits to unresponsive households were finished according to a revised time frame for that level of work. The Census Bureau announced completion of the nonresponse follow-up phase on June 27; the original completion target date of July 7 was based on a 61 percent mail back rate. Some areas posted a high number of completed cases early in the follow-up process because recruitment far exceeded expectations, the director said. He pointed to Commerce, CA, where census managers and community leaders made special efforts to reach the large number of non-English speaking residents, and 900 enumerators were deployed in the first weeks of field operations, instead of the projected 266. In communities where the follow-up work lagged, Dr. Prewitt said, the Bureau brought in more experienced managers and enumerators from other areas, which accounted for the quicker completion of cases later in the NRFU process. Chairman Miller sent a follow-up letter to Dr. Prewitt on July 26, pointing out that hiring peaks did not correspond with periods of rapid completion of household interviews in many of the local offices in question. Dr. Prewitt said the congressman's analysis overlooked the fact that productive enumerators who were reassigned to problem areas stayed on the payroll of the Local Census Office to which they were originally assigned, resulting in incomplete workforce figures for offices that required outside help. The Census Bureau is redoing about 150,000 cases nationwide, including those in the Hialeah area, because of concerns about the quality of the data. Forty-two million households did not return questionnaires by mail, requiring census takers to collect the information in person. Re-enumeration also is planned for selected households in Marion County, IN, Rockville, MD, and two areas of Chicago, as well as isolated cases in other areas. ("Re-enumeration" means the Bureau will set aside the original enumerator-completed questionnaire and send another worker to collect all of the information again.) The Bureau said Hialeah Local Census Office managers ordered enumerators to use both 'blitz enumeration' and 'last resort' procedures early in the process, without informing regional officials of the proposed change. Dr. Prewitt noted that his agency did not find evidence of fraud in Hialeah, but said the Inspector General continued to investigate that possibility. Director Prewitt also said he "took Chairman Miller's concerns seriously" and would provide a report to the oversight subcommittee this week. He acknowledged that some 'curbstoning' (so named because a census taker might 'stand at the curb' and guess the number of residents in a building or house without ever entering) is inevitable in any census but said the practice is not widespread or systemic and that ongoing sample checks of each enumerator's work often exposes individual fraud. In an open letter to members of the Bureau's advisory committees, Rep. Maloney called the allegations of systematic fraud and mismanagement "unsubstantiated." She said Commerce Inspector General Johnnie Frazier and General Accounting Office auditors assured her in separate conversations last week that they had not uncovered any "systemic fraud" in their reviews of census operations. The congresswoman encouraged census employees who believe procedures are not being followed "to step forward and make those allegations in a way that allows the issue to be investigated" by the Census Bureau or its independent overseers. Census 2000 operations continue: Dr. Prewitt and other Census Bureau officials reported last week that 200,000 temporary workers were still conducting coverage improvement activities in the field. There are nine major operations still in progress, they said, as part of the "Quality Counts" phase of the census. The director said he still believes Census 2000 "is a good census" and that quality control procedures "will make it a better census." In early July, enumerators finished follow-up visits in rural and remote areas, including American Indian reservations, where the Bureau employed 'list/enumerate' and 'update/enumerate' procedures to count housing units with irregular or unknown addresses. The Bureau has completed two-thirds of the 2.3 million cases marked for 'coverage edit,' which involves telephone follow-up with households of six or more residents or whose questionnaires contained inconsistent information. In addition, census takers are revisiting 8.7 housing units initially identified as vacant or nonexistent, to confirm there are no occupants. Dr. Prewitt said there was no deadline for completing the visits, but that the first of three 'waves' of these 'coverage improvement' visits was done. The Bureau also is randomly checking three million households nationwide by telephone, to verify the accuracy of the information collected. Other quality-check operations include physical verification of about one million addresses listed on Be Counted forms or on questionnaires completed through a telephone interview; rechecking about 724,000 apparently occupied housing units for which enumerators could not determine the number of residents; confirming jurisdictional boundaries with local government officials; and various internal evaluations of operational progress. The Census Bureau has finished 92 percent of the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (A.C.E.) workload; the 314,000 household survey is designed to measure under-and overcounts in the census. "We will remain in the field until we've exhausted every procedure that will help make this a better census," Dr. Prewitt said, addressing concerns that the census was over or had been rushed. Quality check activities will continue through September, after which no new cases will be added to the information already collected. The Census Bureau then conducts internal checks of the address list and other key components of the count as it prepares for release of the state population totals by December 31, as required by law for congressional apportionment, the director said. News Alert update: Norman Mineta was sworn in on July 21 as Secretary of Commerce, one day after the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination by voice vote. Secretary Mineta is the first Asian American to serve in a cabinet position. He addressed members of the census advisory committees at their July 28th meeting. Advisory committee name change: The Commerce Department has expanded the charter for its 2000 Census Advisory Committee to include planning for the 2010 decennial census and the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau hopes will eliminate the need for the traditional long form in 2010 and beyond. The panel was renamed the "Decennial Census Advisory Committee" to reflect its new duties. The department also named the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse as a new member of the committee. Questions about the information contained in this News Alert may be directed to Terri Ann Lowenthal at 202/484-2270 or, by e-mail at terriann2k(a)aol.com. For copies of previous News Alerts and other information, use our web site www.census2000.org <http://www.census2000.org>. 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