Meet John H. Thompson, U.S. Census Bureau Director

摘要

What about this position appealed to you? As some of your readers probably know, I am actually returning to the Census Bureau for the second time in my career and I'm really excited about our future. I spent 27 years at the Census Bureau, and my final job was director of the 2000 Census. After I retired, I joined the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and had a great experience in the private sector. I returned to the Census Bureau because I saw there were important opportunities to make critical improvements in the way we conduct the census and surveys. In 2000, we didn't have the technology to equip field representatives with smartphones and tablets. In fact, we used the same basic design as the 1990 Census, and the Census Bureau used that design again in 2010. It's incredible to think that, with these devices, we can reengineer our fieldwork. Instead of sending the enumerators out with a stack of questionnaires and then meeting each day to collect the work, we will be able to assign cases intelligently, get the data back in real time, and gather all the important payroll information. We also will not be sending an enumerator out to a household that just remembered to send their questionnaire in after the deadline. We will have a way to remove those cases from our workload. These don't sound like big changes, but I can assure you technology has a big role to play in the 2020 Census that will save the taxpayers money.