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Executive Summary
Pages 1-14

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From page 1...
... MAF/TIGER Enhancements Program. A specific set of improvements has been proposed to the Census Bureau's address list (Master Address File, or MAF)
From page 2...
... The Census Bureau hopes that early attention to planning will make census tests leading up to 2010 more informative and useful. The Census Bureau's emerging 2010 census plan also includes the development of portable computing devices (PCDs)
From page 3...
... Building this research base should include carefully examining operational data from the 2000 census to guide planned practice for 2010 and fully exploring the potential of new tools for evaluation, among them the Master Trace Sample containing results of all census operations for a limited national subset. Much work also remains in integrating and mapping the logical and technical infrastructures of the entire census process, and in developing a rigorous and timely testing and evaluation program for new census systems and techniques.
From page 4...
... Postal Service files, effectively treating MAF updating as "routine maintenance." Moreover, the Bureau appears set to rely on a complete block canvass of mailing addresses, a costly operation just before the census. Absent a strong focus on enhancing the MAF in its own right, throughout the decade and independent of presumed benefits from linkage to a realigned TIGER database, the 2010 census may be conducted with an address source that has unacceptable levels of housing unit duplication in some areas and coverage gaps in others.
From page 5...
... (3.74. The Bureau's current MAF/TIGER Enhancements Program focuses on the realignment of TIGER features and modernization of the TIGER database structure; each of these tasks has considerable associated risk.
From page 6...
... believes that development of a strong research and evaluation program for the ACSis important in several respects. Resolution of issues regarding estimation techniques based on a continuous survey like the ACS and further exploration of the relationship between the ACS and other federal surveys are essential to winning support for the ACS and to its adoption by data users.
From page 7...
... Finally, given the fact that the principal users of the devices will be the large corps of temporary enumerators (with limited training) , there is the risk that Census Bureau PCD development will not take human factors into sufficient consideration.
From page 8...
... Group quarters are not the only populations that have tradit1onally posed difficulties; others include immigrant communities, irregular multiunit housing structures, gated communities, colonies along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the homeless. Enumeration efforts for these populations may be compromised by failure to clarify the definition and presentation to respondents of the residence rules for the decennial census.
From page 9...
... Supreme Court ultimately upheld the use of existing Bureau imputation practices, the debate suggests the need to revisit the techniques, including; the "hot-deck" methodology that has been used by .1 a_ ~ r 1 1 1 ~ · rat 11 .1 1 tne census bureau tar several decades. ~peclucally, tne panel strongly urges the Census Bureau to investigate further the costs and benefits of the basic trade-off between continuing field nonresponse follow-up work versus imputation for nonresponse (Recommendation 5.8)
From page 10...
... Failure to achieve the full potential of architecture modeling would incur severe risks: systems may be ill-suited to handle 2010 census process needs, may fad] during actual census operations due to lack of proper testing, and may not properly interoperate with each other.
From page 11...
... However, this reluctance incurs the risk that a comprehensive plan for the measurement and assessment of census coverage in 2010 will be deferred until late in the census process. It is essential that the Census Bureau have the means to determine the accuracy of its count, and a late-course falIback to the same Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation methodology used in 2000 could be unfortunate, particularly if research on problems raised by the 2000 census experience are not addressed in the intervening decade.
From page 12...
... A major focus of the Bureau's ongoing research and evaluation program should be the development of targeted methods for address list development and enumeration (Recommendation 8.21. Examples of these methods include targeting block canvass to verify address list entries to particular (e.g., high-growth)
From page 13...
... strongly encourages the Census Bureau to pursue smaller-scale testing as resources and timing permit, with the argument that not all census tests need to be part of a general, omnibus test census that is commonly the shape of the Bureau's major test opportunities. The Census Bureau has taken as a major goal the performance of a true dress rehearsal in 2008, in comparison to the 1998 dress rehearsal which was fundamentally an experimental test of competing census designs.


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