 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming tonight. I'm really excited to be hosting this panel. Democracy After Dark presents information about the census for us. I am the assistant director here at the library. I've been a librarian for many years, and I would have to say a big census nerd. There have been so many times in my career where census data has answered such important questions about the country today, the country of the past, and just given us really great insight into our big nation. And what is your name, young lady? I am Anna Whitton, assistant director here at the library. Before we begin introducing our panel, I do want to have a few kind of notes about the space. We have recently installed in this room hearing loop technology. If anyone needs assistive hearing technology, there's some hearing loops in the back table. Feel free to grab one of those. And restrooms are right up the stairs if you need that as well. And I'm going to have actually Kelly introduce our panelists for us tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rihanna. Did you want to talk about the history first or first? OK, sure. So my name is Kelly Linema. I'm a senior planner in the Department of Planning and Community Development. I'm also the coordinator for the Complete Count Working Group for the town of Arlington, working with a number of students and departments and volunteers to try to help do outreach to residents to make sure that we are encouraging people to respond to the census. Anna and I talked about when we were working on this panel, talked about me providing a few notes about the history of the census. So I'll begin with that. And much thanks to Ted Wilmer of The New Yorker and Ken Previtt from the American Academy of Arts and Scientists. I, too, am a census nerd, but I'm not a census historian. So I've cobbled together a few things from articles that they've written. So who are we, the people? That question was important to the founders of our country who understood that a precise census was essential for any government of the people to work. The first official census and everyone thereafter was mandated in the Constitution. Getting an accurate count has always been difficult. And then at the time, it wasn't easy to track people who were perpetually moving west. Counting African-Americans was another challenge. Southern states were happy to count slave populations in order to add to their electoral strength in Congress, but they were loathe to be taxed in their state's full population. The compromise reach was to help preserve the union but add an egregious cost to democracy. African-Americans were counted as only three-fifths of all other persons. An arrangement that established a complicated relationship between race, race categorization that we're still disentangling from today. On the first Monday of August in 1790, not 1970, in 1790, U.S. Marshals began to fan across the country, enumerating everyone they met. It was very, very hard work. There were few rules, there were numerous operational challenges, and the results were met with skepticism by then-President George Washington. Yet, nearly four million people were counted, which raised the membership of the House of Representatives from 65 to 105. Since that first census, there have been challenges. There's been wars, expansion of territory, shifting attitudes toward the count. There've also been triumphs. The 1850 census was the first time that enumerators span the entire continent. More than 3,000 employees were needed to tabulate the results and transport them back to Washington. After the Civil War, the three-fifths world was finally eliminated and the entirety of the southern states population could be counted. Enumerators went out again in 1870 and 1880, but the task of processing census data was increasingly becoming a headache for civil servants. Sometimes it took almost a full decade to tabulate the results. In 1890, a solution was met with technology. The tabulator was introduced just in time for the 1890 census and dramatically improved the process so it reduced the time to tabulate down to about a year and a half. In 1960, another change, door-to-door enumeration was reduced and households were asked to self-respond for the first time. Over the ensuing decades, the non-response became a problem. So by the end of the century, about 25% of households were not responding to the census using the paper form. And the projections for that number were expected to increase to 35% in the year 2000. So the Census Bureau innovated. They developed an extensive, massive advertising campaign and a partnership program, just like what we're doing here with the Complete Count Working Group, with municipalities and civic organizations, and even a more ambitious campaign accompanied the 2010 census with even greater effect. So our panelists are here tonight to discuss the challenges that are facing the 2020 census, which will be the most digital census in history, conducted mostly online and facilitated by enumerators guided by apps. The Census Bureau continues to honor the precise instructions of the founders, who knew that self-government begins with self-understanding. Accounting for every person in the nation was a matter of principle. No one would have blamed the Washington administration if it had paused before the first count in 1790 to deal with more pressing problems. But the nation went ahead with enumeration and the government of the people was established. For it to endure, we must once again ask who we are. So I want to introduce our panelists today. We have Michael Goodman. And actually, if you could briefly describe the organization you're a part of, and then we can go down the line. Thank you. I'm Michael Goodman. I'm a professor of public policy at UMass Dartmouth, where I also serve as the executive director of the Public Policy Center, which is a research group which makes lots of use of census data. About 10 years ago, I was a director of economic and public policy research at the UMass Donahue Institute where I was involved in the preparations for the 2010 census and was involved in the preparation of population estimates. So it's an absolutely critical thing. I think the history framed it very nicely. The census not only helps us to ensure that every American is counted, that we know who we are, but that we receive the appropriate representation in the House of Representatives, which allocates those congressional districts based on the census count. The census is also used as the basis for a lot of decisions that are made at the federal level about how to allocate money based on needs to our schools, to our low income population, and to our communities across the country. And so it's something that I'm a card carrying census nerd. It certainly allows us to gain deep insight into who we are, to identify challenges, disparities, opportunities, but it's also a critically important role in ensuring that our people are fairly represented in our federal governments, and that we get our fair share of federal resources. Actually, she has her hand. Yeah. My name's Carly Berry. I'm a partnership specialist with the US Census Bureau. My job is to do a lot of community outreach to support and promote a complete and accurate census. I've been working a lot with Kelly and other partners in this area, as well as throughout Middlesex County and parts of Boston are my coverage area. There's about 28 of us in the state of Massachusetts, so we all work together and have different geographies that we're working with, and to promote the census. My name's Kelsey Perkins. I'm Congresswoman Katherine Clark's district director here in Massachusetts, and our function in the district office is really to be the link between our constituents in the 24 cities and towns of the Fifth Congressional District and the federal government, and it takes a lot of different shapes and forms and across a number of different issue areas, and one of them is the census, and helping to make sure that we're getting the word out to the communities in our district about how important it is to be counted, how easy it is to be counted, increasingly, and that it's safe and confidential. Hello, and I am James Milan. I work for our local cable television company here in town, ACMI, and I'm here to ask the questions. I am a budding census nerd now having talked to these guys for the last 45 minutes or so, and beginning to get some really interesting answers to certain of my questions, but also just finding out stuff that Michael's already alluded to, and I'm sure we'll be delving into even more, that makes me realize ever more strongly just how important this whole undertaking is for all of us of all ages, including our very young cohort over here, which is delightful to see you guys here, so welcome and welcome to everybody, glad that you're here. I'm going to ask the questions for a little bit as we lay out a number of the different aspects that have already been mentioned, but then of course all of you guys will have a chance for a Q&A or a good while near the end of the presentation. So once again, welcome, and I wanted to start by asking a simple question and one that is already been touched upon by various of your comments, but just to reiterate and give us the bedrock that the discussion will be based on from there, and that is why really is the sense is so important? And then as a correlate to that to begin with, how does it actually work? How is it going to be done in this particular iteration? So feel free to jump in. So I'll defer to how it works to the representative of the Census Bureau, as I know there's a lot of online administrations going on, and I think that's exciting, interesting, and I'm sure of some interest. How is it used? So I mentioned very briefly at the outset, it's used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives, and over the last several decades we have fewer Congress persons than we did, and that's the direct result of the shifting population within the United States as documented in the last several decennial censuses. Overall, the population has been shifting and moving from the Northeast to the Southwest for about a generation now, and what we've seen in the Northeast and in New England as that population has shifted has been the changing allocation of congressional districts in the Northeast. So I know, I believe last time around we lost one, and normally when that happens, right now we had, we had 10 Congress persons and nine districts, and so either one of them has to retire, as was the case last time when Congressman Olver for Western Massachusetts chose to retire, or the districts are drawn into sitting Congress persons needs to battle it out to see which one survives, as appears to be likely in the State of Rhode Island, which currently has two Congress persons, and if the population projections and estimates are accurate, it will soon only be entitled to one. So that will have two senators and one Congress person. I think. I'm from Rhode Island, so it hits home. Yes, so they are really, I think, motivated. I think there are a few other states where there are more members of the Senate than there are other states, perhaps Wyoming. Yeah, so, but not usually the type of thing that we talk about in the New England, certainly that's a reality. The other one I would point out is money. The basis for the allocation of 10s of billions of dollars of federal resources is drawn from these statistics, not just the number of people, but their incomes. So for example, just one example from Massachusetts, the Medicaid program, or Mass Health, which covers somewhere in the neighborhood of one in four of our neighbors here in Massachusetts, the reimbursement that the state government receives for that healthcare that it delivers is directly a function of how wealthy a state they think we are, which is based on census information, ultimately on the incomes of the people who live in Massachusetts. And so getting that wrong in either direction can have significant implications. Title I funding for K-12 public school districts here in Arlington and across the nation is drawn up, is developed based on assumptions that are built from census data. And so it's more than just politics, it's making sure that we get our fair share of the national economy. Yeah, and before we dig into the nuts and bolts, I just want to share with you some numbers that I got from Kelly just before we began to talk tonight, which got my attention and I assume we'll get yours as well, so what Michael was just referring to. $675 billion annually in the federal budget, that's a huge number who can make sense of that, is determined by the census. But let's break that down a little bit and say that that's $22 billion for Massachusetts per year, which breaks down basically to $2,400 per person who has not counted every single year. So that's per year over the 10 year period, not in total. So there is a lot of reliance on this being an accurate and complete count. That is roughly the equivalent of half of the entire state government budget, although many of these dollars go directly to cities and counties. Thank you. So Carly, I wonder if you could. Yeah, so just to kind of elaborate a little bit on what these guys just said, that federal funding is for infrastructure and social services. So infrastructure being roads, schools, libraries, like this one, senior centers. And then social services, they mentioned a few of them, but also things like WIC, SNAP, Section 8 Housing, school lunch programs. So it's really also critical to remember that this is, these are the numbers we're gonna use for the next 10 years. So if we don't get an accurate count now, we're gonna be underfunded for the next 10 years and underrepresented it as well. As far as the, how the census actually works. So everyone will be invited to respond to the census sometime between March 12th and March 20th. You will receive something in the mail to invite you to respond online or by phone. So this is the first year you can respond online or by phone. You'll also receive another reminder notice in the mail that month of March. And after that, if you have responded to the census, then you will stop getting mailings and you will not be visited by a census taker. So there's some motivation to self respond to the census. If you still haven't responded, you'll get a reminder postcard in early April. In mid April, you'll receive a fourth reminder. If your preference is to respond by paper, your paper form will come in that fourth mailing. We will not have extra paper forms at libraries or anything like that. So if your paper form is your preference, unfortunately, you just have to be patient and wait for that to come in the mail. And then you'll receive one final reminder at the end of April. And if you still haven't responded, then census takers will be visiting your door starting in May. So that's kind of how the schedule, what the schedule looks like. There is a flyer I put over there with a bunch of houses on the front. A map of America on the back is the schedule for those mailings. So if you want that, you can grab one of those on your way out. The other really great thing we have in assisting people to respond this year is a language assistance program. So online and by phone, you can respond in 12 non-English languages. Those 12 languages plus English cover about 99% of the American population. We will also have guidance for up to 59 non-English languages online. So the form online and by phone is only available in those 12. But in those other languages, we'll have written guidance as well as YouTube video guidance in those languages on how to respond to the census. So that's gonna be a huge help to reaching all people all over the country that speak different languages. We also have accessibility for low vision. We have large print. We have American Sign Language Assistance online, telephone adaptation for hard of hearing as well. So yeah, that's kind of the rundown of what to expect. I'm sure people have lots of questions but we can tackle those as they come up. All right, thank you very much for that. Kelsey, I wanted to ask you to respond to this. I was struck by the fact that funding for the census is way, way down on the federal level. Apparently, it was funded at 110% and the last census in 2010. This census, it is being funded at 40%. 40%. So somebody's gotta make up for that. And as it turns out, states and municipalities are having to do more than their fair share, it seems. So I'm wondering whether you can just let us know what's going on within Massachusetts to try and address that shortfall. Sure, so I don't know specifically about efforts on the state level but I will say in the Congresswoman's role in the Appropriations Committee, I think this has been a top priority to push for full funding of the census efforts. It couldn't be more important and there's she being on the Appropriations Committee does have a role in pushing for that funding. So she'll continue to push and try to bring her colleagues along as well. So I apologize for putting you on the spot with that. Michael, perhaps. So it's obviously a challenging situation, especially in a tight labor market. We're even being able to hire the census staff even if you have the resources that you need is very difficult. I know for those of you who are living for part-time work, I believe my colleague here is they're hiring upwards of $25 an hour at this point. Yeah, so in Middlesex County it's 2750 an hour. So but in light of the constraints on the available resources for all kinds of reasons, despite the Congresswoman's best efforts, I think one thing those of us that have access to the online option could do would be to respond promptly and efficiently and then allow what are going to be less resources that would be ideal to be focused on those populations that are traditionally difficult to count. So one way to make the limited resources to go farther is to not to force the Census Bureau to come to the homes of those of us who could if we were making it a priority, simply fill out the thing and we're done. Yeah, and the most accurate and efficient data comes from self-response. So online and the phone option are gonna be ideal for the Census Bureau. And as you mentioned, Census takers going door to door is the most expensive part of our operation. So the less we have to use that part of the operation, the better it is for everyone because taxpayers' dollars is what's paying for the Census operation. And many of our communities, especially those that are home to harder to count populations, low income, forward born populations, et cetera, which will be especially difficult to count this time around for fairly straightforward reasons, really need those resources. And so to the extent that we can make the resources that are available in our communities that are relatively better off, less necessary, I think that will just be all the more time and energy that's available to make sure that all of our neighbors have an opportunity to participate. I noticed that somebody in the audience had a question to ask, and I'd like to try something which is rather than leave all the questions to the end because we're covering so much material, I'm going to go ahead and recognize people, ask those questions, come up if you raise your hand, and then I'll ask you to say the question out loud, I'll repeat it probably for the microphone and taping purposes, and we'll move forward that way as long as it stays manageable, okay? And nobody uses their time for editorializing, et cetera. That's fine, yes, ma'am. I just got a quick question, what is the minimum age to be a census taker? So what is the minimum age to be a census taker, yeah? I have a feeling there are other people so the minimum age is 18, the jobs are part-time and flexible, so you essentially, you will go somewhere for training but they try to set up training close to where you live, it's all based on your address, so we try to hire people from within their local community and so you do some training and then outside of that, you'll essentially work out of your home and you're assigned to your neighborhood to visit homes in your local area. You can work nights, weekends, whatever works for your schedule, you can work 10 hours a week, you could work 40 hours a week, so it's really up to you all. And we are hiring, I have several flyers over there, little pub cards that have the website so you just go online and apply, it's really easy, it takes about 30 minutes to fill out the application and it's really just some personal information about where you live and then some information about kind of how you deal with certain situations, so it's kind of an assessment of how you can work with people and deal with sometimes challenging circumstances. Yes, ma'am. I have a question, maybe you're going to talk about this later so I don't want to. Will you talk about the immigration status issue? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay, go ahead, go ahead. Sure. You mentioned that timeline and I'm sure you have targets for response on timeline that you want to get 30% of whatever. Would you be rolling out like an ad campaign? Will you be sitting watching television and hearing it? We should go to our computer to do our census. Yes. Sorry, I just want to just repeat again that the question has to do with the timeline for census response and what kind of promotion or advertising, et cetera, we are all likely to be subject to. So yeah, actually our advertising campaign just rolled out a couple weeks ago so we will start seeing ads on TV and radio ads. I've heard radio ads in the mornings already and I know there's a billboard up down in Boston somewhere one of my colleagues saw. So yes, we will see start seeing ads. In addition to that, we are going to have real-time response for census results so we can see on a map based on your census track how a percentage of how many people have responded in that track. So based on that, we will be using that to target certain areas where we will need to call upon, you might not see national ads pop up more but we will be calling on our local partners to assist us in reaching out to those certain areas and increase the response in those areas, whether it's through ads or targeted partnership relationships with certain communities. We have a lot of language staff on board so if we see maybe a Haitian Creole neighborhood who needs a little bit more help, we'll work with some of their organizations that reach that population to increase the census results there. In addition to that federal outreach, I think the state through the Secretary of State's office which oversees all the elections in Massachusetts has an outreach and marketing campaign planned as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some ads on your television. Featuring the Secretary of State and all that. I don't know how this fits into the national average but just for your information, the, this congressional district, 78.9% of households did mail back their questionnaires in 2010, so that was about 21% that required follow-up and that's not Arlington specific but the 24 cities and towns in this district. I'm guessing Arlington was higher, but. Sure. Is there gonna be a long form? Cause in the past I got a long form, oh my gosh, I took a further form. So the question is, is there gonna be a long form in this year's census? So no, right, so there used to be a short form which was just the constitutionally required questions and then a long form that would give us more information that social scientists and others could use to study the composition and the challenges of the nation from a sociological or an economic point of view but that was suboptimal because those data got pretty old. So by the time we got to the next decennial census we were making assumptions based on data that rolled and so a couple of decades ago or it was after the 1990 census or the 2000 census they moved to just a shorter form for the decennial census and then each year they administer something called the American Community Survey which in Massachusetts goes to about 65,000 households and that's for sure the long form, right? So and critically important that you fill that out to keep nerds like me and Floyd and knowledgeable about what's going on. The nation has supplemented its understanding of the social and economic characteristics of the population and the demographics too so it should not be an excessively long form. Yeah, so the census questionnaire is about 10 questions per person. It asks name, age, date of birth, race, origin, gender as well as whether you rent or own your home and relationship questions. So who all in the home, how are they related? Are they roommates? Is it mom, dad, brother, sister? So if it's just you and maybe one other person living in the home the form is relatively short to fill out. It might take you even 10 minutes. If you have 15 people living in the home then it might take you a little bit longer. Go ahead. You said that sort of the primary means about reach was in the mail and I'm just wondering if you can speak to techniques for reaching people who are not reachable by the mail who may have no fixed address. Okay, so the question is how to reach people who don't have a fixed mailing address? Yeah, go ahead. So there is an update leave operation that happens to reach those who maybe live in rural areas or receive their mail through a PO box. So PO boxes will not receive census information but update leave operation has census workers visit those homes directly and provide them with a packet including the paper form. This area does not include any update leave persons. The other persons of the population that don't have a traditional address include people who live in so-called group quarters. So those could be college dormitories, prison cells, residential medical facilities, those sorts of things. And there are special targeted outreach to those group quarters and people are counted where they live at the time of the census, not where they come from. Yeah, and so- Whether in prison or in college. Yeah, so- There is a difference. Well, yeah, so- One you paid for. Yeah. Well, that's it. Yeah, you want to need all of it, right? You know what? I'm in trouble. Yeah, so group quarters is a special operation that operates separately from the general public. And we work directly with the administrations of those group facilities to ensure that their residents are counted. And within group quarters there's also service-based enumeration operation, which is for the homeless population. So we do an overnight count similar to what HUD operates in the cities and towns. That happens sometime between April, or sorry, March 30th and April 1st. And we work directly with our partners to identify soup kitchens, things like that, as well as outdoor locations where homeless people have been known to be. And we have census takers go out for the 24 hours and collect census information or do a head count if it's nighttime hours. So I'm curious about something Kelly mentioned when she was talking about the history of the census that for a long time it was difficult to deal with all of the data that came in and to figure out what it meant and to accurately compile it, et cetera. And then she mentioned that that had been reduced to about a year and a half, perhaps I think by the 2010 census, in order to be able to use the data. Now, I know you're gonna discuss even further, but we've already acknowledged that. That data is absolutely intrinsically important. And I also understand that there's no way you can give a definitive answer to this, but is the expectation that with this being the most digital of all census taking so far, that that is going to shorten that timeline so that the data, a somewhat complete set of data will be more available at an earlier stage? So the data is compiled into statistics and those tabulated results are presented to the president by December 31st of 2020 and then released to the states for redistricting by March 31st of 2021. Right, so they prioritize the count for the purposes of drawing the congressional boundaries and then drawing state and local district boundaries, including within towns like Arlington. So if you had a representative government or I know you don't have a city council, but for communities that do, those districts will ultimately be re-drawn as the legislative districts will be drawn within the state following the receipt of that data. So, yes? Does fact that the city like lines get re-drawn, does that have an effect on gerrymandering? So the question is what is the relationship between potentially city or county or other kind of district lines being re-drawn in gerrymandering? So the way we do the, so the, so yes? I don't wanna presume that the data will be misused, but certainly can be. So in Massachusetts, the state legislature determines ultimately overseas and administers the process of deciding how the congressional districts will change and then how the legislative districts will change for the state House of Representatives and the state Senate, and then even within municipalities how those district boundaries will be drawn in communities where that's appropriate. So the elected representatives in the state government are in charge of that process. Historically, there have been some examples that I think would fairly be called gerrymandering. I'd like to think we're not going to do that again. There are other states that have determined through public initiative to establish a non-partisan professional expertise-based commission for developing boundaries that do the best job of sensibly drawing the districts. I live adjacent to a congressional district that includes the communities of Newton, Brookline, Taunton and Foll River, which is very hotly shaped districts, right? Drawn shortly after we lost one of those congressional districts, I think in 1990. So the legislators at the state level have that power. And we don't know obviously how the redistricting is going to look in a couple of years, but we can guess based on the fact that population in the western part of the state hasn't been growing at the same rate that the eastern part of the state has the congressional districts in the western part which are really only two congressional districts already are going to have to grow by geographically, whereas the districts in this part of the state around Greater Boston are likely going to have to lose some communities. As long as the streets are on the state house. Yeah. Yes. Is it Carly? Yeah, Carly, you mentioned you have 27 colleagues who are working in Massachusetts. Is that proportionally equal to other states and how they're represented by the census bureau? So the question is for Carly and it is whether she and 27 of her colleagues here in Massachusetts are representative proportionally of what it is the case in other states as well. Yeah, I believe so. So there's about six regions for the US Census Bureau. We're out of the New York region and there's about 200 partnership specialists in the New York region, which also includes Puerto Rico. So it's New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and then New England states. So yeah, they're generally proportionally obviously it kind of depends on hiring abilities in certain areas. So we are hired based on where we live as well. So we're supposed to be working with the community where we live. And then we also hire for language specific language needs as well. So it kind of depends on who's applied and where they live. But yes, generally. Yes. So how do you count children? In other words, how do you make sure that there are two parents that each parent doesn't register on the census or something? That they have a child in New York twice as many children as actually exists? Okay, the question is how are children in households accurately counted? So each household has one census form that they complete. So everyone living in that household should be included on that census form. But I think there's a reference date that you're supposed, is it April 15th? April 1st. April 1st. So I was gonna get that. So wherever the child lives on April 1st is where they should be counted. Yeah, so for example, if a child has shared custody between two parents, they should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time. If the child is truly split 50-50 between each parent, they should be counted where they live and sleep on April 1st. College students should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time, which is at college. On-campus housing, they will be counted under group quarters operation. Off-campus housing is a challenge, but they are counted under the general population. So it's sharing the message with those folks that you and your six roommates need to get together and fill out one census form. And if you send your children to the Buffalo University, they can count it in Massachusetts. And then also if you, there are concerns that there could be two parents, even within the same household, complete the online form. Most likely, if there's discrepancies between those two submissions, it will flag for an in-person follow-up or a phone call follow-up. The census does ask for your phone number and that phone number is only used for follow-up questions, if need be. Though you have mentioned collectively a number of these already, I wanted just to make sure that we get all of the particular challenges that are facing the census in this iteration out on the table. So again, feel free to jump in with any that haven't been identified or ones that you would like to delve into further. Well, we've mentioned resources. I think fear maybe is probably the one that would concern me the most. I think there are a number of particularly difficult to count populations who are likely quite concerned about the implications of participating in the census and like current events. And so I think it's critically important that we make every extra effort to ensure that those communities are counted and assured and protected from those consequences. I do think there are very strict laws in place to protect the confidentiality and the integrity of that information. It would be a serious jailable crime to violate that and not the standing rhetoric from various sources. I think it's incumbent on all of us if we're to overcome that obstacle. And it was brought earlier in the question about immigration states that make sure that fear is not the reason that someone chooses not to participate. Yeah, so piggybacking off of that. Confidentiality is the utmost importance for the Census Bureau. Everyone's individual data is protected under US Code Title 13. And that law protects your individual data from anyone else, including other government agencies. So your personal information cannot be shared with the FBI or ICE. We, every Census Bureau employee, including myself, takes a lifetime oath to protect anyone's individual data that we might be in contact with. If we were to violate that, we could face a five-year federal prison sentence. $250,000 fines are both for every instance of violation. So that's just to exemplify how serious we take confidentiality. And it has been challenged in the federal court system and has always been upheld. So essentially it would take an act of Congress to modify that at this point. Yeah, several ironies, I would say, in what you guys have just, or I would observe in what you've just mentioned. One of which is, you've just described in some detail, the pretty intense safeguards that are established around our privacy with this data. And I wonder if any of you would like to comment on how that compares to the safeguards we have regarding to Facebook and other kinds of data miners. These repairs favor, I mean, we do volunteer a considerable amount of information. And I think, and not just through Facebook and social media and voluntary, but I mean, those of us who fill out tax returns disclose a substantial amount of highly personal and confidential information without a second thought. And so similar protections are in place. In fact, maybe even more enhanced protections. And so that's it. I think someone can look at your tax returns and if they suspect you of something, not the case for your individual census response. And so it's profoundly more secure than the kind of information that's normally conveyed online. Yeah, and that, you know, I think that it's important because there are so many people, it seems out there who, you know, we talk about the current situation. Perhaps this is a perpetual kind of cynicism or distrust that people may have in a knee-jerk way about the government. But I know that I have heard, anecdotally, I'm sure you guys have as well, people just being concerned about the government having this information and what are they gonna do with it? So there you have your answer, I think. Yeah, let me. Yeah, essentially they're only gonna use this information to determine representation and funding. And this information is not shared with any other government agency. I think something else to keep in mind too is what the price of not participating is, right? So it doesn't really prevent the government from having all the information that it already has, or that you've already shared publicly. And it does disadvantage the community when it comes to political representation and government funding. And so I would suggest that anybody who has that concern really consider it in light of the costs of inaction, which I think are pretty great. Yes. Either way. I haven't got a question. You talked about the ad campaign and I'm wondering what the boundaries are with government agencies around the census, advertising, et cetera. So, for example, if I go to the Social Security Office, which they're going to apply for a benefit, if I go during that period of time, is there gonna be a poster there talking about the census or is there a big divide between the bureaucracies? Are the other branches and agencies helping to push the word out or is there some kind of fall there? So the question is just how broadly about different government agencies that we may all have contact with is the promotion of the census gonna be visible or palpable? I can't say without or present certainty, but the Census Bureau is running their own advertisement campaign. So, and typically other agencies do not advertise for other agencies. With that being said, if there was, part of my role is to ask different organizations within the communities to help advertise and promote the census is safe and easy and important. So, with that being said, I offer my materials around. We have posters, so if you were in a library somewhere, you might see a poster. That's not necessarily because the library could have done that out of their own wants or it could be because someone from the Census Bureau suggested them to them. But yeah, so I think you'll see and then each local municipality has some of their own census efforts going on. So, as Kelly mentioned, there's a complete count working group here in Arlington and maybe they've developed some of their own materials or advertising that they're posting around town all up on the same effort. A lot of local governments will be doing a lot of the advertising because at the end of the day, that's where the budget constraints come to a head. So, they recognize the importance of getting the word out and so they're not the other federal agents. Right. Is my concern might be that I'm applying for benefits at the Social Security Office and they might push me to complete the census or imply that it's contingent on completing the census or something like that. That would be wildly inappropriate. You know, with the callbacks, we get so many scam calls and everything. How will people know that it's a census calling people? So, the question is how to distinguish legitimate census follow-up and calls from scammers? Yeah, so the census will never call you except for circumstances for follow-ups. If you are concerned that it's a scam, they can give you their supervisor's phone number or information and you can follow up with them directly to ensure that that's a legitimate census taker. Some other information, just generally speaking, you will never, the decennial census will never ask for your Social Security number, bank account information or money. So, if you ever have someone visiting your door say fill out your census for $5, that would be a scam. And then census employees visiting homes will have badges with IDs. They'll have census bags. They'll have a census device of some sort, either a cell phone or a tablet. And then they too will have a letter with their supervisor's confirmation on it so you can call and confirm that they're a legitimate employee. The census will also never email you. So, if you get an email about filling out your census, that would be a scam. So, those are some of our ways to avoid scams. And when in doubt, feel free to call your congressional office because we're happy to verify with the census that what you're hearing on the phone or what you're seeing in person or getting in the mail is legitimate. I realize that I inadvertently skipped over the woman in the front row who might have wanted to say that question. I understand that your data is protected by law, but is it anonymized in any way after being collected? And also, it's probably out of scope for tonight, but how is it technologically secured or where could we find more information about that? Okay, so the question is about the anonymity. How is anonymity maintained within the data and what technology is used and how can people find out more information about that? You want to talk about that? So, I don't know about the cybersecurity question, but I definitely want to hear the answer to it. All the data that are made available to the public or to the research community or that are used for congressional redistricting or other purposes are anonymized. So, no individual records are shared. I do think that it may be, I think if you've ever done, looked into your family tree, you can go back to old census records, but I think, is it 75 years or 72 years from now, people who do genealogy will have access to individual records, but it would be a significant crime or anything like that to happen now and no data are reported in the individual records. Yeah, and the statistical analysis is done in such a way that no one can kind of back out anyone's individual information or if one family on a block is different than the others, no one should be able to identify that. Especially, essentially they use statistical techniques to change it enough so that the trend is retained, that the actual values couldn't be used to indirectly identify someone. Yeah, and then yes, he mentioned that after 72 years, your individual census data is released. That was put into place when the life expectancy was about 72 years and keeping in mind that your life stage is probably much different after 72 years. So, for genealogy research, yes, the 1950 census will be released on April 1st, 2022. And that's a big deal for genealogy. Exactly, yeah. It brings you right into, you know, your parents maybe or your grandparents. Yeah, some of you, it may be your first census that you were on or something like that. As far as cyber security goes, I am not an IT specialist, but I can tell you that your data is encrypted immediately and goes onto Census Bureau's own servers that are housed here domestically. And that's about the extent of my IT knowledge, but you can go on to the census.gov website and learn more about in-depth cyber security efforts being made. Yes, Beck. Could anybody speak more on the current status of the hotly debated citizenship question, the concerns about it and the political motivations behind it as well? Yeah, so we would like to delve more deeply into the citizenship question, which we know has been discarded, but if you can describe both the political motivations, perhaps, there and the disposition of that and what the consequences are. So I'm struggling to intuit the motivations of the folks that proposed that. I mean, I think it's hard not to see it, at least from where I'm sitting, and I don't work with federal government for the record, as an attempt to deter participation in the census. I believe it's been adjudicated by the federal courts and we are well past the point of no return and that question does not appear on the forum. For those who may be concerned that that means we'll never have knowledge of the share of the population that is represented by citizens and non-citizens. There are numerous other ways of capturing that information so there's good reliable information there as well, including on the size and composition of the foreign-born population, so there's no lack of information there. I think, again, the primary concern that the research community raised was that by raising the concern within non-native-born U.S. residents that this information was going to be captured for the first time and used by a government that hasn't necessarily earned the trust of that community, is that diplomatic or not? Yes, very. That I personally am concerned that simply that conversation itself will make it more difficult to count in important segments of our population, so I think, again, I'm not good at guessing motives, but I think the results of that kind of the debate are clear and I think those that are interested in punishing or undercounting the residents of communities that have public policies or attitudes towards the foreign-born that are currently is disagreeing that it seems like a fairly straightforward motivation for it. Masked it, I think, an effort to obtain information that we already have. Any other comments? I don't say I've heard last night. I am struck, though, that question reminds me of something that you guys were talking about a little bit earlier. I'm struck and was, Carly, when you were mentioning the number of programs, social programs, that are dependent on, or at least the funding for which is dependent and directly correlated to census data, struck yet again by the fact that in a lot of ways that the most direct impact of this data is going to be on our most vulnerable, the most vulnerable populations among us. And that, as you were saying before, Michael, it would be very good if those of us born, or not born, living in relative comfort and affluence were to respond quickly to the census itself. But I'm just, it is just very interesting to know that the people who are most, again, directly impacted may be the people with the least voice within, certainly within our society more generally, but also within this process of determining how the census is going to unfold, et cetera. Yeah, as of... Sorry, that's not a question. I was just gonna add that as of last year it's estimated that roughly 10% of households in this district don't have access to computers or the internet. So it's just another barrier for hard to count populations that it's already so difficult to have a voice. And that's why it's so important to partner with the community organization libraries, like the Robbins Library to make the computers and the internet access available. Yeah, and that is one thing. In my role that we're working towards a lot is working with different community organizations, particularly libraries, and a lot of senior centers to offer response, what we're calling events. So opening up kind of an open house style event with computers available, census staff available to help folks respond to the census, answer their questions, and we're protected by Title 13 to keep their data confidential, but then also asking some of our partners to make accessible computers or devices, whether it's a kiosk style type of thing available for a census response during the months, pretty much, March through July. Yes, yes ma'am. Two questions. Well, you said Middlesex County, about 78% of the population response to the census? Yeah, 78.9% of our district. Okay, our district. Yeah. So if not everyone's gonna fill out the census, how did you try? Is the census, those numbers, the numbers that you have to, that's it? Or do you have a formula for estimating? That's self-response. That's self-response. But then the actual numbers are for redistricting and all that. Right, so sorry. You have a formula to, yeah. Yeah, so the question is, given that you will not be able to get 100% self-response, how do you deal with the gap between those who self-responded, as you mentioned, about 80% in the district last year or last time, and what do you do with the final numbers that you have? Do you extrapolate the remaining population or just use those? So those numbers are for self-response. So then the reminder is followed up with census takers. Right, but you're still leaving up to the census because you're not gonna get everything. They get pretty much everybody. Okay. If they can't find you, they'll ask your neighbor. All right, so there are communities that I think there's real reasons to believe that there are undercounts. But I think the point is, is that if you're not counted by the time that it's over, that you have to go with the information that you have, there is no reasonable way to inflate it. So social scientists could look at it after the fact and make a careful estimate of who was missed based on under data, but for the purposes, for the constitutional purposes of allocating federal representation, no fudge factors. I'm curious about what you said, Carly, though, that they would go to your neighbors. I don't know if you meant that purely facetiously or if, in fact, as a last resort or close to, you actually, they actually would go to your neighbors and ask them the questions that they, and take those answers. They attempt six visits to each household. After that, they will follow up with a neighbor to see if there's actually persons living there or not. I don't think they would collect their personal information from. The neighbor, but they would be there. Would they select a number? The number of people, or just the fact that it's inhabited? Yeah, I can't say it for certain. That's under a field of outreach there, but they do go to everyone to try to find and collect some things. Between the decennial census, the census bureau spends a lot of time developing a comprehensive list of addresses. And so, I think inevitably some of those are missed, too. And so, one of those field workers that are out doing the canvassing, sometimes they're discovering new developments or new housing units or a home that was a single family home 10 years ago that now has three units with it and that sort of thing. Error is inevitable, but it's supposed to be a hard account to 100% of the people. And the Secretary of State's office, Secretary Galvin's office, does a lot of work with the census in the intervening years between the actual census years to keep those address lists updated because they're not staffed to the level where they're staffed now in the intervening years. So the Secretary of State's office does a lot of that work. And then we also had an address canvassing operation last August through October where we had census staff actually out on the ground verifying certain addresses, visiting homes to confirm their mailing address things like that. We also have administrative records that we can use to try to estimate it between the census, how many people are here so we know when people are born, there's generally a record. When people pass away, there's generally a record. Movement in and out from other states to other states or from other nations to other nations can be measured to although less precisely. And how many housing units there are and that sort of thing. So there are ways of using demography and those methods to get a sense of how many people are there. But it's one time every 10 years that we get to check that against again a physical count. And that's what's coming up this spring. Did you have a question from before? I think we were talking about the community groups and I'm thinking of senior centers are with those computer connection with the library maybe they have days with the senior center Are the faith groups involved? Are churches involved? Oh yes, yes. So sorry, the question is whether there are churches and faith groups involved in terms of trying to capture populations that are maybe difficult. Yes, essentially we will work with anyone who wants to work with us. Yes, sir. I wonder if you could talk with the history of racist classification systems and census going all the way back through the clock but also and I think that even the current categorization system is still racist and yet there's also a desire to want to be able to compare a sense of the census. And so there's that tension between wanting to update the categories but also the desire to want to maintain continuity and comparison between data. Within that I know there's applications of the multiple identification system that was developed on the land when years ago or whatever it was and I'm wondering how that's affected the data and what you think the future should be about these categorization systems. Woo! Yeah. Okay, I'm going to try first. So sorry, I'm not going to answer. I'm actually going to try and frame the question. You can ask what do they ask about race? Right, well I think that the questioner was at least in part concerned with how do you balance traditional racist classifications and the evolution of that towards more representative classifications and you want continuity and how much is there still a taint or still something to be concerned about in the existing classification system? Right. So no? And I heard too, so it's complicated, right? And so through the history of the census there's been counting and sorting by racial category and the names attached to those racial categories have changed over time and the status of the people within those, right? So in 1790, black residents of the United States were property, right? So the way that the census is treated at treated racial category says evolved over the history of the country as our understanding and appreciation for those issues has grown not as far as we would have hoped but further than we were in 1790. And so over time the number of options that are available that respondents can select has multiplied and I think over the past couple of decades the emergence of a recognition that certain categories that were really more ethnic than racial, like for example Hispanic status as they refer to it now. And these names and these labels can be problematic for folks but I'm just sort of describing the words that are used and then of course folks of some form of Hispanic origin can either, can be of any racial category. And so there are tensions within racial minorities and the social science community about how this works with some advocating for finer distinctions that more accurately represent people's experiences in history and then some stakeholder groups for example that see that division as perhaps more accurate but essentially reducing the count of the number of people in that group and thereby reducing the power that they have and so it's extremely loaded. Right now my understanding is as was the case last time that you can self-select one or more categories. Many of us are of mixed ancestry and of multi-racial backgrounds and so it is still the case that respondents are forced to choose from now more than one category. There's been some interesting social science done at the university in Cambridge about what people do when confronted with this and the most recent analysis I've seen suggests that when forced to choose people opt for their fathers or the paternal lineage or identity and so as an analyst and user of this data, right? Every time we add new categories it does make it difficult to compare over time but I think the way that they've dealt with that or tried to balance it is to retain all the categories and just add new ones, right? And so I think as our understanding of race as category has become more complicated so have our attempts to measure it and I think it's very much work in progress. And I just want to acknowledge that everybody in the audience heard me use racist rather than racial and I apologize for that because I didn't hear it myself until I was done. Some might argue, right? But yes. Any other questions? Yes. In the homeless population, like you have to take your challenge on that one night, do any of them get on the rake if there's some reason they don't want to be canceled? What are the issues there? So what happens in that night or two nights where you're counting the homeless population, especially if they are skittish about being counted for some reason? How often is that a problem? Probably always, I would think. I mean, I don't know what the, I know about the HUD point in time, homelessness count in which community members fan out into the community and actually manually counts folks. Which is happening tomorrow. Yeah. So yeah, so then. It's very similar to the HUD operation. But yes, I mean, there are people that do not want to respond. And it's just there, that staff is specially trained to deal with those situations. I do suspect that the reason that the counts occur during the winter months is because that is the time when people are most likely to take advantage of available shelter so that they would be more readily counted. But I do think whether for due to concerns, do the immigration status or mental health or other conditions, it's a particularly challenging group to count. Yes, sir. Is there, for example, a section of, hey, we saw this person, we know they exist, but we couldn't get any details from them? Is there like a kind of generic person to take a point for that? Or are they just not counted at all? So what happens in a situation where you know you've seen somebody but you can't get, you can't get the data, you can't get them officially registered or recognized as part of the census? Yeah, so part of the service-based enumeration operation is to do that overnight count. During the daytime hours, they will collect whatever census information they can from folks. At nighttime, they will simply do a head count. So in a similar situation, they might see someone there. If they're not awake or incapable of answering those questions, they will count that person. They just won't have demographic information. Yes, sir. I'm curious what the efforts in Arlington will be, what are the specific challenges and efforts to have a complete count? Yeah, so we've discussed the challenges to the general popular, I mean the general census or the federal census, but also what about, what is specific to Arlington in terms of challenges? Do we need to get Kelly up here for that? Yeah, I think we should defer to Kelly. Great, and I believe you mentioned that this is, we have time for one more question after this. So in Arlington, we've established the Complete Count Working Group. We have a number of people on that group. So we have representatives of different departments from Health and Human Services, the Council on Aging, the Planning Department, the School Department, I'm sure, and the Clerk's Office and the Town Manager's Office and the Libraries. The Libraries are critically important. And we are also working with members of community organizations like Arlington Eats. We're working with a resident who is an attorney who has worked with other Complete Count Committees across the nation, so she gives us a national perspective. We have a member of the Sustainable Arlington and others out front, and we also have high school students who are helping us out and doing some really critical work in reaching out through the Arlington High School population, helping us with translation services. We meet once a month. Each of these members of the Complete Count Working Group has a specific population with whom they are trying to identify community leaders so that they can create that relationship with those community leaders and then do the outreach to try to encourage members of that community to respond to the census. On top of that, the Council on Aging and the Library are working to establish kiosks for helping to respond to the census. I know the Council on Aging is also looking at identifying certain phones that they can use for people who aren't comfortable using computers. So I think all of these, it's just a start. We're also, we've just requested a print budget so we can do additional print materials and get some posters out there. That's just kind of the beginning of what we're working on and it's a work in progress. Other questions? We've got time for one more. Did you have a question? No, we had a question, but I don't know if you. Nope. If you cannot get complete data from, you know, some portion of the or some percentage of the population, how much does that skew the overall accuracy? Well, it depends on how many you miss. It's hard to know who you haven't counted even though I think there are ways of estimating that and it depends who. So I think there's inevitable error built into this despite everyone's best efforts and our job I think is to try to minimize that as much as possible. I do think that the portions of the population that are undercounted are not a random collection of residents of the United States. They're more likely to be of a lower income status, they're more likely to be from an underrepresented or disadvantaged community. And so I think in light of the function of the census, it's incumbent on all of us to do everything we can to ensure that those populations are feeling safe enough and have the access to the necessary resources to fully participate and that way we can avoid that sort of undercount which I think could not just skew the data but could help lead to unfair outcomes. All right and I think with that we're gonna wrap it up. I wanna thank Michael Goodman and Carly Berry and Kelsey Perkins for joining us today and enlightening us I assume. I'm speaking accurately for you guys as well as myself and thank you guys for being here. Thank you everyone very quickly before everyone leaves. I wanted to really extend our thanks to our panelists today. Michael Goodman came from UMass Dartmouth, not that close. Carly thank you again for joining us and Kelsey it's really great to hear a little bit more about how this data is going to be used locally and what it actually means for us not to get the data locally. This panel presentation tonight is part of our ongoing series Democracy After Dark where we look at a lot of different kinds of topics. We had a great presentation last spring on gerrymandering. There was a question on gerrymandering that I wish you had been here for that presentation, it was fantastic. I do have evaluation forms at the back of the room. There are little purple evaluation forms and I'd love to hear what other kinds of topics people would be interested to hear about under the umbrella topic of Democracy After Dark. Thanks again so much for coming tonight. Sorry, I just wanted to add one last thing which is that all of you who have cable in here in Arlington you have access to ACMI and everybody who's got internet can get to ACMI.tv. If you or others that you know would be interested in hearing or seeing what happened here tonight it will be available both on the channels and especially at our website ACMI.tv where you could access it at any time at your convenience.