Census moves ahead to verify data collected in SW Florida

Elysa Batista
Naples Daily News
August 22, 2010

For the 2010 Census, it's now about crossing the T's and dotting the I's.

Census spokeswoman Pam Page-Bellis said, although the base field operations have been completed, including the nearly three month door-to-door response and coverage follow-ups, there is some double and triple checking being done on the data collected.

At its height, more than 2,000 people were hired by the census' Fort Myers office. About 700 of those people canvassed Collier County from May to July.

Page-Bellis said the office called back about 300 workers to tackle the last phases of the 2010 operation – the "vacant delete check" and the "field verification" phase.

During the "vacant delete check" operation, staff makes sure a housing unit classified as vacant (or nonexistent) in fact fits that profile as of April 1.

Lastly, in the "field verification" phase, census workers go out to make sure that if a survey was received from a specific address, the unit does exist and matches the address on file.

"These jobs will run through the end of August (for one of the operations) and the first week of September for the other," she said. "By the end of September we'll be gone."

Earlier this month, U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announced the bureau would return $1.6 billion in 2010 Census operational savings to the U.S. Treasury.

"That's about 22 percent of the total amount Congress gave us to do the job this year. While we're not finished with the operations of the 2010 Census, we're confident we can finish up a professional job without calling on that $1.6 billion," Groves wrote on the 2010 Census website.

According to census officials, approximately $800 million was saved in the contingency funding set aside in case of natural disasters or operational breakdowns. With no natural disasters during the key door-to-door follow-up, there was no need to tap those funds.

The census saved another $650 million due to a smaller than planned door-to-door, follow-up operation.

Page-Bellis said the fact that 72 percent of households returned the questionnaire by mail meant fewer homes had to be visited to obtain census answers.

In addition, Census officials said the 565,000 census workers used in this operation were more productive than in the previous census, resulting in lower labor costs.

"We had an outstanding workforce," Page-Bellis said.

Finally, another

$150 million was saved because a number of census operations came in at a lower cost, including Southwest Florida.

"Florida did fantastic," said Page-Bellis, adding that the state had some of the largest workloads this census and that Southwest Florida completed most of the work ahead of schedule.

But how soon will those results be available?

In December, the Census Bureau is expected to release the official 2010 population counts for the nation and states, which will be used to apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

More than a dozen states also stand to gain or lose House seats after the 2010 census depending on last-minute shifts in population – including the Sunshine State.

In addition, by

March 31 the Census Bureau will release more detailed data to help states redraw congressional, state, and local legislative district boundaries