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Credit to Author: Issie Lapowsky| Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:07:52 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n On a frigid <\/span>morning in Washington, DC, last week, four staffers from the United States Census Bureau stood shoulder to shoulder on a stage, smiling widely as they soaked in the whoops, whistles, and eager applause from the crowd seated before them. The Esri Federal GIS Conference, an annual event where government employees gather to talk about mapping technology, isn\u2019t exactly what you\u2019d call a rowdy affair. But this year, the Census Bureau representatives\u2014a quartet of geographers and IT professionals\u2014put on a particularly impressive show, demoing a suite of new tech tools for the 2020 census. At least, it was impressive if you knew anything about how the census usually works.<\/p>\n Despite the country\u2019s ballooning population and advances in automation, the crucial process of counting every person living in the United States hasn\u2019t changed all that much in the course of the census\u2019 230-year history. Until now, it\u2019s mostly come down to distributing paper questionnaires to every home and hiring an army of clipboard-carrying canvassers to knock on the door of anyone who doesn\u2019t respond. In 2020, that will change. For the first time ever, the bureau is asking the majority of people to answer the census online. Not only that, but behind the scenes the entire process of running the census is getting a high-tech facelift.<\/p>\n If the bureau\u2019s plan works, a digital census could make the count more inclusive and, eventually at least, help cut costs\u2014the 2010 census was the most expensive in US history, costing more than $12 billion. But surveying a population of 330 million people in real time using brand new technology is a lot harder than pulling off even the most high-stakes demo. For as many opportunities as this tech-centric approach to the census holds, experts fear the bureau is opening itself up to a range of new risks, from basic functionality and connectivity failures to cybersecurity threats and disinformation campaigns.<\/p>\n Given the ways that census data underpins the fundamentals of democracy, those aren\u2019t risks to be taken lightly. It\u2019s the census, after all, that decides how congressional districts get divvied up, how many seats each state holds in the Electoral College, how the federal budget is allocated, and, ultimately, whether people are fairly and accurately represented by their government.<\/p>\n Standing before a <\/span>blue-lit background at Esri, the Census Bureau team showed off the goods.<\/p>\n First, there was a tool called BARCA, which uses satellite and aerial imagery to help census workers see how every block in the country has changed over the past decade. They can use that information to more efficiently build out address lists for every home in the United States before the census begins. What used to take two hours for canvassers to do on foot, the bureau representatives said, now takes just two minutes in the office.<\/p>\n Then came ROAM, a mapping product that\u2019s helping the bureau predict where people are least likely to respond to the census using historical and demographic data. With this information, the bureau can target specific community groups, like churches and other organizations, to help spread the word. Both BARCA and ROAM were developed internally at the Bureau.<\/p>\n Finally, the team demoed what is arguably the most transformative tool of all: an app called ECaSE, which some 350,000 census workers will use as they take to the streets on foot next year to follow up with the estimated 60 million households that are expected not to respond to the census the first time around. The app, which was developed in partnership with a contractor, will run on iPhone 8 devices provided by the bureau, and will personalize canvassers\u2019 routes based on their work availability, the languages they speak, and the best time of day to visit each household. The data they collect will be encrypted and automatically uploaded to the Census Bureau\u2019s central repository. The goal is to replace, or at least radically reduce, the 17 million pages of paper maps that the bureau printed out for the 2010 census and the 50 million paper questionnaires that field workers had to tote around with them. And because the tools are expected to make field workers more efficient, the bureau expects to hire roughly half as many people as it did in 2010.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a good reason a lot of information is becoming digitized. It\u2019s efficient and useful. But it also creates vulnerabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Josh Geltzer, Georgetown Law<\/p>\n Little wonder the audience seemed pleased with the presentation. And yet, thanks to years of budget cuts and a series of scaled-back field tests, some fear the Census Bureau and the broader US government are ill-equipped to handle any new issues that could arise as a result of the high-tech census, particularly at a time when hackers and propagandists seem to be working overtime to undermine American institutions.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a good reason a lot of information is becoming digitized. It\u2019s efficient and useful,\u201d says Josh Geltzer, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. \u201cBut it also creates vulnerabilities, and we\u2019re reminded of that virtually every week in the form of a hack or data being used in ways it\u2019s not supposed to be.\u201d Last year, Geltzer and a group of cybersecurity experts sent a letter<\/a> to the Census Bureau expressing their concerns and asking for answers about how the whole operation will work.<\/p>\n The bureau is well aware of the risks it faces, and it\u2019s spent years developing defenses against them. The data will be encrypted, and both the field staff and office staff who access it will only be able to log into the system using two-factor authentication. The bureau is also working with the Department of Homeland Security to implement a system called EINSTEIN 3A<\/a>, which will monitor government networks for malicious activity, and to communicate with the intelligence community about specific threats. In a recent program review, the agency said it would conduct a bug bounty program to test public-facing systems.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the moment we collect your responses, our goal\u2014and legal obligation\u2014is to keep them safe,\u201d the Census Bureau said in a statement.<\/p>\n But the bureau\u2019s tech team has also acknowledged<\/a> that some external threats aren\u2019t fully within their control, like, for instance, the threat posed by hundreds of millions of respondents using unsecured, potentially corrupted computers, phones, and tablets to report their answers, leaving those answers open to manipulation. The bureau has also warned that phishing attempts<\/a>, where fraudsters contact people posing as the Census Bureau, could trick people into divulging sensitive information about themselves. The same goes for bogus websites that imitate the bureau. And, in the age of social media, there\u2019s always the risk that a dedicated disinformation campaign could attempt to mislead people about the Census or undermine their faith in the process.<\/p>\n "Some of these challenges are new for the 2020 census," the bureau's deputy director Ron Jarmin said onstage at the Esri conference. "This is a foundational thing for our democracy. Much like elections, people that want to sow discord in our country might try to mess with the census."<\/p>\n The bureau says it\u2019s been working with companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft to counter this sort of behavior and flag it before it\u2019s too late. But as recent examples of election meddling around the world have shown, there are limits to what the government, or these companies<\/a>, can do to totally mitigate these threats. \u201cWhile we cannot control bad actors, we are working with partners to identify phishing attempts and website spoofing,\u201d the bureau says.<\/p>\n According to John Thompson, who served as director of the Census Bureau from 2013 through May 2017, the most important thing the government can do is educate the public about what the Census Bureau will and won\u2019t ask of them. It won\u2019t, for example, ask people for their social security numbers or attempt to contact them by phone or email.<\/p>\n The problem is, the bureau has been woefully underfunded for years, an issue that has far-reaching consequences for census preparation.<\/p>\n Usually, the Census <\/span>Bureau sees its budget increase in years leading up to each decennial count. Between 2014 and 2017, however, funding was essentially flat<\/a>. Thompson says that forced the agency to defer a number of programs for years, including research on its paid advertising program, which helps inform the public about why it's important to respond to the census and offers assurances about the security of census data.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s an incredibly important program,\u201d Thompson says. \u201cA lot of stakeholders were becoming concerned it was being deferred.\u201d<\/p>\n The bureau says it\u2019s on track to begin running ads in January 2020, two months before the first census invitations go out in March. And while early research may have been deferred, the bureau has since conducted surveys<\/a> and focus groups that will help the agency understand people\u2019s mindset toward the census.<\/p>\n Research on advertising wasn\u2019t the only thing that got cut during the lean days. Due to budget restraints, the bureau was forced cancel<\/a> a series of planned field tests in 2017 and dramatically reduce the scope of its "dress rehearsal" test in 2018, which was supposed to replicate the full census in a few key geographic areas. Originally, the 2018 test was to be carried out in rural West Virginia; Providence, Rhode Island; and tribal lands in Washington State. In the end, the Census Bureau eliminated all its end-to-end tests except the one in Rhode Island. That meant the agency never got to see how the full system would function in a rural environment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a difficult decision, but it was all we could do,\u201d Thompson says.<\/p>\n The lack of comprehensive testing in remote locations presents a serious possibility that the system simply won\u2019t work properly in areas that are on the wrong side of the digital divide. \u201cThere\u2019s been less practice for this than even the Census Bureau thought there should be,\u201d Geltzer says. \u201cGiven it\u2019s going to scale up dramatically for the real thing, the lack of practice is a concerning thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The bureau did test what\u2019s known as address canvassing\u2014the process of building the address list\u2014in West Virginia and Washington. This allowed field staff to at least try out some of the tools they\u2019ll use during the real census. According to the bureau, those tests did turn up connectivity issues, motivating the agency to tweak the technology so that now, the bureau says, \u201cif a census taker is in a low connectivity area, the data they collect is stored and encrypted until the device is connected to the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n As an additional backstop, the Census Bureau will also mail out paper questionnaires to the 20 percent of households in regions with limited connectivity or with older, less tech savvy populations. It relies heavily on data from the annual American Community Survey to assess where these populations live. These people will still have the option of completing the census online if they\u2019re able. Every household will also have the opportunity to answer by phone for the first time.<\/p>\n For all of the bureau\u2019s contingency plans, fancy new tools, and slick demos, there are plenty of recent examples of what could go wrong when invitations to respond begin going out across the country in March of 2020, says Terri Ann Lowenthal, former staff director of the House of Representatives\u2019 census oversight subcommittee.<\/p>\n