Financial and Human Capital Dedicated to the Partnership Program

The cost of the partnership program from October 1997 through September 2000 totaled about $142.9 million, or about 2 percent of the estimated $6.5 billion total cost for the 2000 Census. This is an average of about $1.19 for each of the 120 million households the Bureau estimates make up the nation. Partnership Program Staffing Levels

At its peak in fiscal year 2000, the Bureau staffed the partnership program with 594 full-time equivalent positions of which 560 positions were located in the field and 34 were in the Bureau’s headquarters (see table 1). As a result, the former local census office manager and AMFO ended up doing most of the outreach and promotion work.”
For their part, while the partnership specialists we spoke to generally agreed that the Bureau hired enough specialists to carry out partnership activities, they also reported that they could have used more clerical support to help alleviate some of the specialists’ administrative work, which included distributing thousands of posters and other promotional items to partner organizations and entering data into the Bureau’s partnership tracking system (each regional census center typically hired four to six partnership program support staff). Partnering Decisions and Logo Use Were Governed by Unwritten Guidelines and Criteria

As we noted in our October 2000 report, at the time of the census, decisions on which organizations the Bureau partnered with and what events the Bureau participated in were governed by unwritten guidelines and criteria. According to Bureau officials, partnering decisions were driven by (1) the Bureau’s desire to partner with virtually any organization that was willing to support the census and (2) the specific demographic, cultural, and other characteristics of each census region. The Bureau encouraged organizations to use the census logo to customize promotional and other literature, and made it available on its Internet site, but aside from stylistic guidelines, such as logo color restrictions and logo font requirements, the Bureau did not provide any guidance on what constituted proper and improper use. Although the written guidelines are a step in the right direction, they still do not address how partners may characterize their association with the Bureau, nor do they discuss how partners may use the Bureau’s logo. The Bureau did not detect many of these problems prior to the census in part because CPUMS was developed after the 1998 dress rehearsal for the 2000 Census and was not fully tested before it went operational. Develop regulations specifying how organizations may characterize their association with the Bureau and how they may use the Bureau’s logo.
Why GAO Did This Study

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.

What GAO Found

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.