Adapted with permission from the National League of Cities
The U.S. government’s decennial Census is a mammoth undertaking. In order to ensure the greatest odds of success, planning and preparation begin years in advance. City leaders can lay the groundwork for an accurate count in three main ways: collaborating with the Census Bureau, integrating city and municipal departments, and involving their community through Complete Count Committees.
1. Collaborating with the Census Bureau
The Census Bureau relies on local governments to assist with preparations for the enumeration and to help “get out the count.” Collaboration with local governments is managed through the Census Bureau’s network of nearly 250 regional and field offices. Census Bureau operations begin roughly three years prior to Census Day and play out in three major phases:
Phase one: Establish where to count
One of the first tasks is to validate, update, and map every address in the country that needs to be counted. Local governments play a huge role in ensuring accurate and updated address files by participating in the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) program, which ran from 2018 to 2019.
The 2020 Census also offers a separate, voluntary program, the New Construction program. This program enables cities to account for residential units built after LUCA reviews, but prior to Census Day in 2020 (April 1).
Phase two: Motivate people to respond
Increasing the number of self-responses can significantly decrease the cost and difficulty of achieving a complete count. The Census Bureau conducts an expansive communications campaign to encourage self-response—city social media and communications channels can help amplify these messages. This will ensure that time and resources are preserved to address your hard-to-count communities.
Phase three: Count the population
During the self-response phase of the Census, households can respond online, by phone, or by mail. The most resource-intensive phase of the census is the in-person “nonresponse follow-up.” For the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau estimates that up to 500,000 temporary workers, referred to as enumerators, will be needed to reach all of these households. Local governments can be valuable partners in recruiting workers who will be effective representatives for the 2020 Census in their communities.
What you can do
- Participate in the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) and the New Construction program to ensure that addresses for your community are as complete and accurate as possible. Even if your city did not participate in LUCA, check to see if your county did.
- Develop a communications link with regional Census Bureau leaders, in an effort to coordinate and cooperate on activities to “get out the count!”
- Use city-run social media and communications channels to amplify the Census Bureau’s communications campaign in order to maximize the self-response rate in your city. This also may include the communication of more tailored messages that are customized for the population of your municipality.
- Support the enumerator and address canvasser recruitment processes by having city workforce development boards identify viable candidates and provide application assistance. These efforts help provide the Census Bureau with qualified applicants who are representative of the communities in which they will be working.
2. Integrating city and municipal departments
Due to the scale and complexity of the operations, the impact of the 2020 Census will be felt in many departments of city government. With a little planning, city leaders can minimize disruptions to day-to-day business and ensure a smooth and successful Census operation in your community.
What you can do
- Use your own position to “get out the count.” Local elected officials are often the most trusted government representative that residents hear from on a regular basis. Remind your constituents why participation in the 2020 Census is so important for themselves as well as for their families, their neighborhoods, and their city as a whole.
- Start an interdepartmental team and designate a lead coordinator who will facilitate an integrated outreach effort and serve as a source of answers and guidance for agency leaders.
- Check to see if your city participated in LUCA. Typically, the highest elected official (the mayor) must enroll a city in LUCA, but sometimes a city’s planning office handles the task. Be sure your city also participates in the New Construction program.
- Work with local utility companies to include alerts and reminders in monthly mailings. Not only are utility records one of the best sources of accurate address information, but monthly service mailings can also include reminders for Census participation during the early part of 2020.
- Connect your schools with the Statistics in Schools program. Teachers will find classroom resources to help students understand the importance of being counted so they can carry the message home.
- Host internet kiosks at libraries, community centers, and other public buildings to facilitate internet response to the Census. Easy access to online submission portals is the best way to mitigate the broadband access gap for certain communities.
- Alert your local law enforcement, emergency response, and dispatch services to handle calls from the community during the in-person follow-up phase. Enumerators will be canvasing door-to-door, potentially leading to increased 911 calls.
3. Involving your community through complete count committees
To ensure a complete and accurate count, you need to engage your community and develop trusted voices to educate and motivate the residents of your city. One proven tool is the Complete Count Committee (CCC), a volunteer organizing body created at the local level to increase awareness of and participation in the Census.
At the highest level, the goals of every CCC are the same: identify hard-to-count populations in your community, develop strategies to increase participation, and conduct outreach to those communities through trusted voices.
But CCCs will look different in every city. Large cities may have dozens of members with several different subcommittees. Smaller cities may only have three to five members, representing the local school, church, and community development organization.
The Census Bureau encourages both state and local governments to create CCCs, so you may be able to identify partners at the state or county level. But you know your community best, and involving your own residents and local organizations will ensure you have a CCC that is trusted and effective.
What you can do
- Organize a local CCC for your city and appoint a chairperson to lead the committee. Other potential members include business leaders, developers, religious and faith leaders, educators and librarians, workforce development experts, nonprofits, community advocates, local media, and social media/technology specialists.
- Connect with CCCs that have been organized by your state or county to avoid duplication of efforts and to leverage their larger scale. Often, your state may have resources, such as geographic/historic data, that local CCCs can use to avoid creating redundant materials.
- Identify your hard-to-count communities and barriers that may prevent them from participating. Maybe you have new immigrant communities with reservations about participating in the Census, large gated communities or closed high-rise buildings that are hard to canvass, or lower-income or elderly populations with limited internet access. By identifying these hurdles early, you can better overcome them. The Census Bureau’s ROAM tool (www.census.gov/roam) is a great place to start: it can help you map and target potential hard-to-count communities for outreach.
- Develop your CCC plan of action. Now that you have your stakeholders established and you know the challenges facing your community, develop a plan for the 2020 Census. It could include strategies such as targeted messaging campaigns for hard-to-count communities or plans for community events such as parades or rallies around Census Day. Census Bureau partnership specialists can be a great resource for expertise and advice.
- Learn more about how to establish a CCC in your city and how a CCC can promote participation via the 2020 Census Complete Count Committee Guide and Training Manual, available at census.gov/2020completecount or nlc.org/census.