The recent partial government shutdown delayed preparations for the 2020 head count, including for a field test of the controversial citizenship question, internal Census Bureau documents suggest.
the"Risks and Current Issues" page of a Jan. 15 slide deck prepared to update Deputy Secretary of Commerce Karen Dunn Kelley about the field test. "When the furlough ends and ACS operations resume, staff resources will be diverted to restart the ACS," the officials continued on the same page, noting that some staffers were"encouraged to work ahead" on the field test for the citizenship question"in anticipation of the competing priorities.
"The recent partial government shutdown did not result in any change that impacted the schedule, cost, or scale of 2020 Census operations." Another internal slide deck from January , however, notes that, as of Jan. 22, the furloughing of bureau employees who work on iCADE — a system for capturing data from handwritten responses on paper questionnaires for the census — was"beginning to impact operational delivery milestones.