Condé Nast and Deloitte Digital have teamed up to present Digital Acceleration in the Time of COVID, a nine-part series of stories from global business leaders who've charted a path through uncertainty.
Here, US Census Bureau Assistant Director for Communications, Operation and Management Burton Reist, and Division Chief of the bureau’s IT Service Management Office Zack Schwartz take us behind the scenes of what was arguably the most complex and trying census count in US history.
It was cool but sunny in Washington DC on March 16, 2020, the pale pink blossoms of the cherry trees just beginning to bloom; a typical late-winter day. Outwardly typical maybe, but a day Burton Reist will never forget: “It was a Monday, and the first day I’d ever teleworked in my career.” Reist is a 20-year veteran at the U.S. Census Bureau, currently serving as its Assistant Director of Communications. A new virus was spreading globally, and stay-at-home orders were just clicking into place. “We knew we were about to face some very big changes.”
So it went: workplaces emptied and schools closed. In-person events and meetings were canceled. In DC, official guidance was as yet unclear: the White House recommended “maximum telework flexibilities” for federal agencies like the Census Bureau, while public health experts were more adamant: stay home, even if you feel fine. The spreading disease could easily overwhelm the country’s health care system.
Whatever guidance people chose to follow, the pandemic could hardly have come at a worse time for Reist and his colleagues; the bureau was just starting the decennial census—the once-a-decade population count. For years, census workers had been planning, coordinating and modernizing their systems for the 2020 Census, and in fact needed to complete data collection by July 31 in order to produce the apportionment counts by December 31 as required by law. It was a head-spinning moment for all concerned, the equivalent of a plane getting a new flight plan just as it lifted off.
The Stories Behind the Numbers
The United States Census is a constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the United States every ten years. Census data shape not only political representation, but the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to local communities. This money supports a wide cross-section of programs from health clinics, to school lunch programs and disaster recovery.
Zack Schwartz, Division Chief of the bureau’s IT Service Management Office, puts it succinctly: “There was a lot at stake for a lot of people. We needed to do our job right, but with a different plan than we were relying on only a few weeks earlier. It was an emotional roller coaster.”
They advertised everywhere—even on pizza boxes—to reach traditionally undercounted communities.
Throughout US history—and as recently as 2010—survey responses had been submitted exclusively on paper forms. But for the 2020 Census to succeed in such a suddenly (and rapidly) changing environment, it would have to leverage a flexible program design that had been in development for a decade. The bureau also had to minimize risk to both its employees and the general public in the COVID environment—all while ensuring a high-quality population count.
A traditionally herculean task had just become even more challenging. “The Census is big and intense and goes on forever,” says Reist. “But in 2020 that forever felt a lot longer than it ever did. By the end of it,” Reist admits, “our people were exhausted.”
The team got to work.
A Hyperlocal Focus
First, the Census Bureau extended the deadline for field data collection from July to October. Then team members assessed how they could shift operations to include more virtual and digital engagement. Among the considerations: how could the bureau best support its feet on the street —the enumerators? How would messaging need to change? What did this mean for the bureau’s usual partnerships with national and local organizations? Perhaps most urgently, how could they combat a rising tide of misinformation, disinformation and scams? Regular course corrections were addressed in daily team meetings. “It was a tough battle,” Reist recalls. “The work reached a crescendo by April and then stayed there for months.”
Enumerators were an especially important part of the process. While much of the counting would be done through surveys that had already been mailed in or filed online, respondents at over a third of the approximately 152 million residential addresses contacted still hadn’t replied. Someone would have to physically pay each a visit—a ‘non-response follow-up’ in official parlance. This wasn’t uncommon. “The census doesn’t just happen in Washington,” Reist points out. “It happens out in the field.”
To address use cases in the field, the bureau deployed a number of mobile apps that helped enumerators optimize routes for their daily case assignments, enter survey responses, and track hours and mileage expenses. Pay and bonus incentives were created to both attract more enumerators to the cause and incentivize those already in the field to work more than the average of 19 hours per week. This digital-first approach proved more than successful, with enumerators logging nearly double the number of cases per hour than their predecessors had in 2010.
Messaging was also transformed. The Census Bureau already had an integrated communications plan in place that included working with a network of ad agencies to conduct traditional, hyperlocal and multicultural media outreach. In late March, the bureau produced new TV ads aimed at increasing online responses. Webinars, teleconferences, Facebook Live and Twitter chats replaced in-person events hosted by partners to generate excitement about the 2020 Census. The bureau advertised seemingly everywhere—even on pizza boxes—to reach traditionally undercounted communities.
Deloitte Digital pitched in by helping the bureau create new partnerships with technology companies that could further amplify census messaging. These partnerships resulted in organic digital and social activations by various platforms: Facebook and Instagram news feeds, the Google search page, the Starbucks app, Amazon Alexa, and in Ask Me Anything chats on Reddit.
“The Census Bureau was really successful at meeting audiences where they were, delivering the right message at the right time to encourage people to self-respond on the Internet,” says Mike Isman, Managing Director at Deloitte, who leads the firm’s Census work. “Often, this meant leveraging new technology partners, platforms and channels to communicate the value of the 2020 Census.”
Increased emphasis was also placed on the bureau’s already-expansive partnership program, comprised of nearly 400,000 local and national organizations. The Salvation Army, Feeding America, and Emgage USA, for instance, distributed Census promotional materials along with meals, groceries, and other goods. New partners with a hyperlocal focus—like supermarkets, religious organizations, and small businesses—were recruited to help. Among the latter: owners and employees of Vietnamese nail salons who’d formed the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. The group aired Vietnamese language radio programs in immigrant communities in California, Georgia, Texas and Hawaii that encouraged people to participate in the count. Other local partners supplemented standard email outreach with text messages and phone banks, using Census’ downloadable resources, toolkits, and graphics to promote the 2020 Census on their websites and social media channels.
To boost partner participation, the bureau gamified outreach efforts with a daily Census response rate map. “Local communities could see how they were doing compared with their neighbors,” Schwartz says. “It provided friendly competition. These groups and the work they contributed kept the Census moving forward.”
Put together, these and other efforts were making a great impact. Unfortunately, in 2020 there were also significant, countervailing efforts working to undermine them. Misinformation. Disinformation. Scams. What could be done to combat this?
Keeping Things Real
Efforts started with establishing a Trust & Safety Team, a cross-functional network of partners and experts that worked proactively to counter the threats. Partnering with Deloitte Digital to stand up the team, Census used state-of-the-art social listening tools to detect and investigate, in near-real time, content of concern—like violent threats to Census employees and misinformation about how Census data is used. Deloitte Digital also worked hand-in-hand with Census leadership to protect the agency from cybersecurity threats, create a Fusion Center to streamline information-sharing, and establish a network of technology partners to elevate accurate information.
“We were excited to partner with the Census Bureau as it adjusted in unprecedented times,” says Isman. “Together, we helped Census create a blueprint for how to combat mis- and disinformation that’s now being replicated across other Federal and State government agencies.”
The Trust & Safety team successfully identified thousands of instances of mis- and disinformation on various platforms—data it then passed along to social media platforms and local communities. “We’d look for certain words or phrases, or an uptick in attention,” Schwartz explains, “anything that was a potential red flag. Then we’d ask local partners to address it because we felt that it would be more effective that way. We fought this battle at the community level.”
The neighborhood-specific social network Nextdoor, for instance, collaborated with the bureau to take down thousands of inaccurate posts. Fellow government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission pitched in to guard citizens—especially the elderly—against scammers pretending to represent the Census Bureau. The unprecedented level of information chaos took its toll on Census workers who, by the end, were physically and emotionally exhausted.
Still, the efforts paid off. With the deadline now past, early results are overwhelmingly positive: a stunning 99.98% of addresses throughout the country were accounted for. “We knew the system was going to be put to the test,” Schwartz says. “We’d put a lot of energy—as well as blood, sweat, and tears—into the planning even before we knew the pandemic was going to radically reshape everything. That flexibility saved us.” Moreover, he adds, the bureau set an example that other federal agencies can emulate.
“Government must use technology to lead citizen interaction,” Schwartz concludes. “We can’t rely on decades-old systems and methods to do that. We need to look at what’s next and be there.
“We need to be prepared.”
Related Stories
Taking Care: Enterprise is on a Journey to an Unmatched Customer Experience
