on a sample of areas across the  country to estimate the number of people and housing units missed or  counted more than once in the census and to evaluate the final census  counts. Person Interview Operation Generally Completed on Schedule

The Bureau appears to have generally completed person interviewing  according to its operational schedule. Although the sites of  the dress rehearsal were not representative of the whole nation, they  provide a reasonable benchmark for the 2000 census. Programming Errors Temporarily Hindered Management of Person Interviewing

Early in the person interviewing operation, the Bureau experienced and  resolved problems with a critical function in its automated work  management system that was to allow supervisors to selectively reassign  work among interviewers. officials, the Bureau addressed the underlying programming error  within 2 weeks, and the operation proceeded without a reported  recurrence of this problem. Person Interviewing Address List Quality Appeared to Be Better Than the Census

An accurate address list avoids unnecessary and costly efforts to locate  nonexistent residences. estimates. person interviewing in  2000;  determines whether sufficient overlap may have occurred to violate the   determines whether increasing the flow of status data on specific  decennial follow-up operations to the managers of independent surveys  can help ensure the independence of such surveys, particularly when  such operations are scheduled to overlap in the field; and   determines what additional steps or controls to preserve the  independence of census follow-up and person interviewing, if any, could  be implemented for other census follow-up operations that collect  enumeration data and are scheduled contemporaneously with person  interviewing. results. The basis for this new recommendation centered on our  finding that the Bureau’s quality assurance program did not report fully on  the percentage of the interview workload replaced by the quality assurance  interviews. 1. 3. 4. 5. The Bureau's St. Louis, Missouri, office should be deleted from the list  of Census Bureau regional offices and replaced with Kansas City,  Kansas.
What GAO Found

As part of its Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE), the U.S. Census Bureau interviewed people across the country to develop an estimate of the number of persons missed, counted more than once, or otherwise improperly counted in the 2000 census. In conducting the interviews, which took place in person or over the phone, Census faced several challenges, including (1) completing the operation on schedule, (2) ensuring data quality, (3) overcoming unexpected computer problems, (4) obtaining a quality address list, and (5) keeping the interviews independent of census follow-up operations to ensure unbiased estimates of census errors. The Bureau completed the interviews largely ahead of schedule. On the basis of the results of its quality assurance program, the Bureau assumes that about one-tenth of one percent of all cases nationally would have failed the program because they were believed to have been falsified. Early on, the Bureau dealt with an unexpected problem with its automated work management system, which allows supervisors to selectively reassign work among interviewers. According to the Bureau officials, the Bureau addressed the underlying programming error within two weeks, and the operations proceeded on schedule. The address list used for interviews had fewer nonexistent listings than did the lists used by the major census questionnaire delivery operations. An accurate address list is important to prevent unnecessary and costly efforts to locate nonexistent addresses. Although the Bureau implemented controls to keep the nonresponse operation separate from the interviews, the assumed independence of the census and ACE was put at risk because another follow-up operation intended to improve census coverage overlapped with the interviews.