On February 12, Maurine (“Mo”) Reilly, Census 2020 Partnership Specialist for Larimer County (and a former Wisconsin Rotarian) introduced us to the many aspects of the 2020 Census. There are 30 Partnership Specialists in Colorado. The Constitution mandates that there be a complete census every 10 years to provide data for determining how many legislators each state is entitled to and how at least $675 Billion (some $1500/person/year) in Federal Funds are allocated. To achieve an accurate census, they are also seeking temporary Census Workers, paying $20.50 per hour. For more information see https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html.On several occasions during her presentation, Reilly reiterated that the count process is set up to be easy, safe, confidential/secure and complete. All the data is protected by military-grade security features. All of the personal identification data are immediately separated from the strictly census data and kept separate for at least 72 years. Each census employee takes a lifetime oath not ever to disclose any personal information from census data. The nine census questions may be answered in any of four ways: by phone or on the internet (with questions available in many languages; either of these approaches may take as little as 40 seconds), by paper mailer (if the individual has not responded by phone or internet; available in English and Spanish), or in person responding to a visiting Census 2020 employee (who will have a badge with his name, a laptop, a shoulder bag with the Census logo, and a cheat sheet of potential questions & answers in some 59 different languages). None of the nine questions asks about citizenship status, social security numbers, financial information. Some questions (e.g., Race/Ethnicity) have a range of possible answers or may be left unanswered. Duplications will be mostly automatically eliminated.
A large part of her job is to interface with local organizations (e.g., churches, service organizations, food banks, homeless shelters) to get the word out about the census, to encourage hard-to-reach populations to participate, and to insure everyone that the process is easy, safe, and secure. The Census does not share data with any other department of the government, but may get data from other departments.
The schedule for implementation of the census is:
March 12: Start phone and internet reporting.
Mar 30 – Apr 1: visit off-site locations (e.g., under bridges) to canvas hard-to-reach populations.
April 1: Everyone living at an address on that day will be reported, anyone not living there on that day will be reported elsewhere.
April, 2020: canvasing of group quarters.
May 13 – July, 2020: Visiting homes from which no response has been received.
December, 2020: Report delivered to the President.
March 31, 2021: Redistricting information is sent to the States.
Across the U.S., it is expected that 95% of individuals will self-report. Some 4.5% (probably a greater percentage in much of Colorado) will require additional effort.