On November 19th the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau released a short statement acknowledging “certain processing anomalies” in the decennial census data collected earlier this year. While the director did point out that “processing anomalies” have been encountered in previous censuses, no further detail was given to put the current anomalies in context. According to the New York Times, the new deadline for delivering congressional apportionment data to the president is on or about January 26. The statutory deadline is Dec. 31.
Just what is a “processing anomaly”? An answer is difficult to come by from the Bureau, but a September interview of Chris Mihm, Director for Strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) by the Federal News Network provides some clues. When asked how the Bureau’s compressed timeline due to Covid-19 will affect the census, Mihm explained that it is the post-processing of the census data that worried him most; “And what they do once they get all the Census data in, is they look for duplications, they look for anomalies to tell them that they may be making an error, or there may be a problem in places with the data.”
Indeed, duplications and counting individuals at the wrong location was his top concern, over and above any IT issues with processing large volumes of data. The GAO detailed various areas of concern in late August. You can read the report here.
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