Why It Matters

The Census Bureau's schedule for modernizing critical IT systems is unreliable, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The agency has struggled to coordinate four separate modernization programs, creating scheduling conflicts that could delay systems essential to the 2030 Census.

The Census determines congressional representation, federal funding allocation, and shapes policy decisions affecting hundreds of billions of dollars. If the Census Bureau cannot synchronize its IT modernization efforts, the 2030 Census could face the same kinds of technical failures that plagued the 2020 count.

The Big Picture

The Census Bureau is pursuing four distinct IT modernization programs to collect, store, process, and disseminate data for future surveys, including the 2030 Census. This represents a fundamental overhaul of systems that have grown outdated and fragmented over decades. Prior to the 2020 Census, the agency faced significant challenges in modernizing and consolidating its IT systems.

The four programs operate with separate budgets, timelines, and management structures. The GAO examined the Enterprise Data Lake program, which handles enterprise-wide data storage and processing. The agency has fully implemented leading practices for risk management and substantially implemented practices for cost estimation and requirements management. However, the schedule for the Enterprise Data Lake program "is not comprehensive, well-constructed, credible, or updated regularly," according to the GAO assessment.

The GAO identified two critical structural weaknesses. First, the Census Bureau's requirements management plan does not align with how it actually manages low-level requirements, creating potential inconsistencies between what systems are supposed to do and what they actually deliver. Second, the agency lacks a documented process to ensure that changes to survey onboarding dates get incorporated into schedules for related IT programs. This means disconnects between interdependent systems could go undetected until it is too late for managers to respond.

The GAO made three recommendations to the Department of Commerce: update the requirements management plan, develop a reliable schedule using best practices, and create a formal process for communicating schedule changes across the four modernization programs.

The Department of Commerce agreed with all three recommendations and said it would prepare an action plan. As of the report's publication, all three recommendations remain open, meaning actions to satisfy their intent have not been taken or are being planned.

The Bottom Line

The 2030 Census will be conducted in a more complex technological environment than 2020, with increased reliance on remote data collection, cybersecurity threats, and the need to process unprecedented volumes of information. The Census Bureau cannot afford a repeat of the last-minute fixes and workarounds that undermined data quality in 2020.

The Department of Commerce's commitment to implementing the GAO's recommendations is essential, but the agency must act quickly to develop a coordinated schedule before modernization delays jeopardize the decennial count itself.

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