Census 2010: Dress Rehearsal of Address Canvassing Revealed Persistent Deficiencies in Approach to Updating the Master Address File

摘要

To conduct the 2010 census, the Census Bureau will have to contact, via mail or in person, an estimated 134 million housing units, and will rely on its master address file (MAF) to do so. The MAF is intended to be a current, comprehensive list of every address in the nationwhether occupied or vacant. It is a compilation of, among other things, the bureaus address list from Census 2000, U.S. Postal Service data, and local government address information provided primarily through an operation known as LUCALocal Update of Census Addresses. The bureaus mechanism for collecting and tabulating decennial census data is to link (geocode) MAF addresses to the bureaus digital map known as TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing). A subset of the MAF is used to create the list of addresses for living quarters to be included in decennial operations and ultimately to count people where they live. Only geocoded addresses are sent tothe address canvassing operation, and only geocoded addresses receive census questionnaires. Geocoding is how the bureau fulfills its mandate to count people in the right location for purposes such as redistricting. The bureau conducts address canvassing to ensure the address list for the census is as accurate as possible. Estimated to cost more than $500 million, this operation entails verifying, updating, or deleting addresses; adding missing addresses; updating streets on the TIGER maps; and geocoding every structure by assigning Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. During this massive operation, thousands of temporary decennial staff using handheld computers containing MAF addresses and TIGER maps try to locate every place a person could live or stay and ensure it is correctly recorded and geocoded.