In a letter to the state’s independent redistricting commission, Karin Mac Donald, the director of the California Statewide Database program, (SWDB) confirmed that the SWDB has the technical capabilities to process the legacy format files that the U.S. Census Bureau plans to release ahead of the final redistricting data files scheduled to be released by Sept 30. According to the Census Bureau, the data contained in the legacy file and the final file will be identical.
Earlier this month, the bureau indicated that despite the six-month delay in delivering redistricting data to the states, it would be possible to release the same data in unformatted form a month or so earlier, which would be sometime in mid-August. The unexpected announcement came with the warning that the legacy data would require considerable technical skill to get it into a usable form. MacDonald’s letter to the commission and legislative leadership details how the SWDB would format the data and indicated confidence in the SWDB’s ability to process, format, and ensure the dataset is accurate. Formatting the data is estimated to take two weeks.
Several other vendors have indicated they would be able to work with legacy format data including Election Data Services and Caliper Corp., a major supplier of redistricting software to states.
macdonald-legacyformatMemotoCRC-032721
