2000 Census

To take a more complete and accurate count of the nation's population in the 2000 Census, the Bureau of the Census partnered with other federal agencies, as well as with state, local, and tribal governments; religious, community, and social service organizations; and private businesses. According to the Bureau, about 140,000 organizations participated in the partnership program by assisting in such critical activities as reviewing and updating the Bureau's address list, encouraging people--especially hard-to-count populations--to participate in the census, and recruiting temporary census employees. GAO found that the Bureau spent about $142.9 million on its partnership program, or about two percent of the estimated $6.5 billion the Bureau allocated for the census and an average of about $1.19 for each of the 120 million households that the Bureau estimates are in the nation. The Bureau staffed the partnership program with 594 full-time positions, of which 560 were allocated to the field, while the remaining slots were located in the Bureau's headquarters. Decisions on which organizations to partner with and what events to attend were governed by unwritten guidelines and criteria and were driven by the Bureau's desire to collaborate with virtually any organization that would support the census. The Bureau made the census logo available on its Internet site and encouraged partners to use the logo to help promote the census. However, the Bureau did not have any written guidance on how partners could characterize their association with the Bureau or what constituted appropriate use of the census logo. The Bureau has since prepared written guidelines for making decisions on partnership engagements. However, the guidelines fall short in that they still do not address how partners may (1) characterize their associations with the Bureau and (2) use the Bureau's logo. Although the Bureau developed a monitoring system for tracking, planning, and analyzing partnership efforts throughout the nation, it was not fully tested before it went operational because of time constraints. As a result, several shortcomings went undetected until the system was implemented.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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