Preparations for the 2020 census have been slowed by the partial closure of the government: NPR

Although some parts of the federal government stopped for 35 days during the closure, Census Bureau officials insisted that work on the upcoming 2020 census be continued.

Preparations for the enumeration provided for in the Constitution were "at full capacity" and were "uninterrupted"From December 22, 2018 to January 25, the Census Bureau said, due to nearly $ 1 billion of funds carried over from last year.

However, recently published internal documents suggest that federal government leave at the closure has disrupted some of the 2020 census operations, including the preparation of the first-ever field test of a controversial US citizenship status issue. a 2020 census form.

Starting in June, about half a million households will receive one of two test census forms similar to the questionnaire that the office plans to use next year. The question "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" will be included on some of the forms.

The test is designed to be grafted onto the response systems used to American Community Survey. This is an ongoing survey of the Census Bureau that affects about one in 38 households each year.

While the 2020 census workers were funded during the closure, the office workers who work for the American Community Survey, or ACS, have been released for more than one month.

"Due to the closure of the government, the ACS operational systems are not updated," Census Bureau officials wrote on the "Risks and Current Issues" page. a slideshow developed on January 15 to inform Trade Secretary Karen Dunn Kelley of his field test. .

"Once the leave is over and the AAFC resumes operations, staff resources will be allocated to the AAC's takeover," officials continued on the same page, noting that some employees were " encouraged to work from the "field test of the citizenship question" in anticipation of competing priorities ".

NAACP and its local subsidiaries in Connecticut and Boston provided the documents to NPR. They were communicated to the NAACP earlier this month by the Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. information filed in 2017 by civil rights groups, represented by the Yale Law School Rule. of the law clinic.

In an email, a spokesman for the office, Michael Cook, declined to "comment in detail on draft documents or internal information documents out of context."

"No operational milestones were affected and no impact on the cost and / or magnitude of the 2020 census operations was affected by staff leave during the expiry period. partial credit, "Cook said in a written statement. "The recent partial closure of the government has not resulted in any changes affecting the timing, costs or scale of the 2020 census operations."

Another January internal slide set, however, indicates that as of January 22, iCADE office staff – a system that collects data from handwritten answers on paper questionnaires for the census – was beginning to have affect milestone operational delivery. "

"At the moment, it is unclear whether the impact can be mitigated," Census Bureau officials wrote during a presentation prepared for Kelley on Jan. 30.

Understaffed and underfunded

NAACP raised concerns about staff shortages and inadequate funding for the census. The funding approved by legislators for FY 2017, for example, did not meet the levels that the office indicated it needed.

"We were already worried even before the government closed down," said Khyla D. Craine, Assistant General Attorney for NAACP. "It's just another way to show how the unnecessary closure of the government has had an impact on such a crucial thing."

In a separate trial conducted by the civil rights group, a federal judge of Maryland ruled in January that the NAACP says that the 2020 census is underfunded can go forward.

Earlier this month, President Trump signed a spending bill for the 2019 fiscal year giving the Census Bureau $ 1 billion more than it had been allocated last year. .

Previous funding shortfalls forced the office to reduce its further field testing for the 2020 census. The only test of the next enumeration conducted last year in Providence County, Rhode Island, was in the US. is run without a complete advertising campaign and quieter than expected by the office.

Some advocates fear that without a test campaign, the office may not be ready to educate communities of color, immigrants and other hard-to-number groups in the 2020 census.

An internal document recently released by the Commerce Department reveals that some members of the government had similar concerns.

"By missing the opportunity to test a complete advertising campaign in the late 2018 census test, the advertising strategy for the 2020 census would be untested and unproven with a population whose consumption patterns media have changed dramatically since the last decennial census cycle, "says Michael Anderson, head of the Department of Commerce, in the internal 2016 document. The paper analyzed the impact on the census of funding levels proposed by the Congress and the White House under the Obama administration.

Anderson added that failure to "refine" the campaign through testing "could lead to a weakness in targeted advertising to hard-to-enumerate population groups – again leading to additional costs for in-person visits. and less accurate counts of these population groups. "

The Department of Commerce Public Affairs Office did not respond to NPR's request for comments on the 2016 document.

When asked if the assessment of Anderson corresponds to the Census Bureau's position on the absence of advertising campaign for the census test of last year, Cook, Office spokesman, pointed out in a written statement that the 2020 census advertising campaign was "based on the most robust basic research, to support a ten-year census communication campaign".

"We will continue to conduct extensive research to inform the direction of our creative approach throughout the campaign to motivate individuals to respond to the 2020 Census, particularly in communities with historically low response rates." "he wrote.