Austin Business Journal

The U.S. Census Bureau on Friday proposed a recovery plan to Congress to help get the country back on its feet and conduct a successful 2010 census.
The Census Bureau needs to recruit about 3 million people for temporary positions at about 500 local offices throughout the nation for the 2010 census.
When its operations peak in April 2010 the U.S. Census Bureau Dallas Region will need to employ up to 75000 workers throughout Louisiana Mississippi and Texas.
The bureau intends to use the $1 billion it received under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to carry out the plan.
Under the proposal the bureau will invest $250 million in partnership and outreach efforts to minority communities and hard-to-reach populations in an effort to promote participation in Census 2010.
The remaining $750 million will be used to support early 2010 Census operations that will reduce operational and other risks at a critical stage of the census process.
Plan highlights include:
• $30 million to hire additional interviewers who will work from call centers contacting households that may have indicated on the Census form the wrong number of people living in their household.
• $120 million to raise awareness in communities about the census process. Funds will be used to hire additional partnership staff by July. Their work will conclude in the summer of 2010.
• $100 million for public outreach including education about the census and its importance especially in areas that have historically lower-than-average initial response rates. Funding will support local and national outreach initiatives and partnerships and the Census in Schools program.
• $138 million for group-quarters operations which access and count residents living in dormitories prisons nursing homes and other group-living situations.
• $116 million to deliver census questionnaires to addresses where the location of the housing unit or the mail delivery point does not ensure that the mail gets to the correct unit. For example if mailbox banks are broken or mail is left at a central location.
• $108 million for the update/enumerate method of data collection in communities where housing units may not have house number and street name mailing addresses such as American Indian reservation rural Spanish-speaking communities and resort areas with a high concentration of seasonally vacant living quarters.
• $388 million for local census office staffing.
Census questionnaires will be mailed or delivered to every household in the United States in March 2010.