Roadmap for IT modernization ahead of 2030 Census ‘unreliable,’ per watchdog

The U.S. Census Bureau needs to polish up its schedule for enterprisewide information technology updates for the upcoming 2030 Census to ensure the agency has reliable timelines and avoids delays, a congressional watchdog found.

In a Thursday report, the Government Accountability Office said that, though the Census Bureau has completed some of the risk management and cost practices for its updates to enterprisewide data storage and processing, its schedule — or roadmap for those plans — falls short.

Per the report, the schedule failed to meet any of the four criteria the watchdog evaluates for schedule completeness: That it’s comprehensive, well-constructed, credible, and controlled.

“Without fully implementing leading practices for a reliable schedule, the Bureau faces schedule uncertainty that may result in unreliable completion dates, time extension requests, and delays in the program,” the report said.

The findings come after the department struggled to implement a modernized data collection process during the last decennial Census. GAO previously found that the bureau faced challenges with the schedule for developing and testing systems leading up to the 2020 Census, as well as ballooning IT costs following late decisions on systems and contractors. 

This time around, the GAO found the schedule for the ongoing enterprisewide effort — also known as the Enterprise Data Lake program — didn’t capture all activities and the ones that were there were missing details, such as resources and information about interdependencies between activities. The schedule also had date anomalies despite officials saying the roadmap was updated regularly.

Per the report, officials explained that the issues could be due to the possibility that the work might extend well beyond its current 10-year schedule, among other things. 

The watchdog recommended that the bureau should ensure that the plan for the enterprise-wide data program is regularly updated, develop a reliable schedule, and document a process for the modernization programs to communicate with the survey’s “onboarding schedule.”

Per GAO, a Department of Commerce official concurred with all of the recommendations and said the agency would develop a formal action plan. A FedScoop inquiry about the status of that plan to a general Department of Commerce press inbox was not immediately returned. 

Simultaneously, GAO also called on the bureau to improve its tests ahead of the 2030 Census to ensure it has relevant data to make design decisions. 

In a separate report also released Thursday, GAO found that the bureau is rolling back some of its testing for the decennial survey, which could have the agency making final determination about survey design without accurate information.

According to that publication, GAO said the Census Bureau shrunk its planned tests to prepare for the next decennial census from six locations to two and from 19 operational activities to 10. 

It recommended that the bureau test the activities and features it removed from its 2026 plans prior to finalizing the Census design. It further recommended the bureau address skill gaps in its workforce ahead of the survey. 

The Department of Commerce similarly agreed with those recommendations.