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Guide of the Week: finalizing plans for the 2010 Census
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently identified Finalizing plans for the 2010 Census as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress. If you're not a docs librarian or a policy wonk (there are a few of you reading FGI, right?) you might not realize the importance of this issue. The GAO spells out why every American should care about this issue:
The results of the 2010 Census are central to apportionment, redistricting congressional boundaries, and distributing around $300 billion in federal aid to states and localities each year.Translation - The results of the 2010 census will redraw the legislative districts in your state, possibly changing how you are represented. The results will spark the redrawing of your congressional district, unless you live in Alaska or Wyoming, which have statewide Representatives. This redrawing could make it easier or harder to unseat your current Member of Congress. In addition, the 2010 results will affect how much federal money each state will receive. In terms of Census planning, I'm afraid that for the first time in considering these critical transistion issues, I can't find any guide from the ALA GODORT Exchange Wiki that would help you understand planning for the next census. For that, you had best just read the GAO page on the subject. On the other hand, if you're looking on how find and use census information once it's published, librarians can help. A lot. Check out these guides for a start. Next week I'll be dealing with librarian produced guides relating to "caring for service members." So if you have any guides relating to that topic, please try and post them to the Handout Exchange this week. Hopefully next week I won't get caught flat-footed again. Continue reading
Census 2010 Problems
Uh oh. The Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) PDAs that are supposed to replace the traditional pen and paper method used by census-takers are not working properly. Thus, the census "dress rehearsal" this spring has been delayed by a month as the agency scurries to come up with backup plans. The FDCA program that was meant to save taxpayers $1 billion now has these delays sending the cost $600 million to as much as $2 billion. Carlos M. Gutierrez, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, testified at the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on the status of the 2010 Census. Gutierrez stated: "We have discovered serious problems with the FDCA program and I am personally involved in bringing key issues to the surface and developing a way forward. In short, the current situation is unacceptable." The GAO published a report on these Census problems and made an announcement designating the 2010 Census Project as "High Risk". The GAO warned the Census bureau last year about slow and inconsistent data transmission from last year's field testing. Guess they should have heeded that warning, right? The IEEE blog made a good point on this whole mess: "Fed Ex can use handhelds to track packages, why can't we do the same for collecting Census data - should be dead easy, right? The idea in itself wasn't not outrageous, as long as the risks involved were clearly understood and managed" and obviously they were not! Continue reading
Census Bureau Accidently Places Data Online
The Census Bureau today reported that a file containing limited respondent information on 302 households, commingled with fictitious test records, was improperly posted on one of the agency’s externally accessible servers in violation of strict agency policies regarding the protection of respondent information. The file was immediately removed. No Social Security numbers were contained in the files and the Census Bureau has no evidence that any respondent data were misused. “As soon as we learned of the improper posting, we moved quickly to fix the problem. We immediately shut down the site and began an investigation,†said Census Director Charles Louis Kincannon.Continue reading
SIPP saved for 2007!
Great news! According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the nation’s only large-scale, longitudinal source of data on poverty, unemployment, and disability, has been funded for FY07!! Read the press release. FGI has been tracking this for a while. You can see our past stories here. Continue reading
Caution on comparing ACS to Census 2000
While this won't be news to those who follow Census developments closely, it is a nice summary of some of the important deficiencies in the American Community Survey:
- 2005 American Community Survey by Roger Owen Green, NYS SBDC Research Network (November 21, 2006)
Writing for the New York State Small Business Development Center (NYS SBDC) Green notes that:
...because of previous cuts in the Congressional funding, the 2005 ACS does not capture data from group quarters, which include prisons, college dormitories, and nursing homes.
One thing this means is that in geographic areas where there is a large group quarters population, comparisons of figures from ACS to Census 2000 may be inaccurate or misleading. As Green says, "...politicians and the media have glommed onto these new statistics, making assertions about populations that the methodology does not support."
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