What does the National Research Council Say

1
What does the National Research Council Say?

• Will Craig
• University of Minnesota
• Member of the Mapping Science Committee
  (2000-2005)

2
Reengineering the 2010 Census Risks and
Challenges (2004)

• To its credit, the Census Bureau has recognized
  the importance of partnerships with local and
  tribal governments by designating their creation
  and maintenance as Objective Three of the
  Bureaus Enhancements Program. However, the
  Bureau has not provided a clear indication of how
  such partnerships would work.

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3
The 2000 Census Counting Under Adversity (2004)

• The Bureau needs to redesign its cooperative
  programs with state and local governments for
  MAF/TIGER work. The LUCA effort in the late
  1990s was one-sided. The Bureau offered each
  local government the opportunity to participate
  but did not actively encourage participation or
  provide financial or other support beyond
  training materials. Also, to protect
  confidentiality, the Bureau required
  participating localities to destroy all
  MAF-related materials after the review was
  complete. Consequently, localities could not
  benefit from the efforts they made, which were
  often substantial, to update the MAF. Because of
  TIGER inaccuracies, localities with better
  geographic information systems had to force their
  data to fit the TIGER database before they could
  begin their local review.

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4
The 2000 Census Counting Under Adversity (2004)

• We believe that a successful federal-state
  cooperative program involving the level of effort
  of LUCA must be a two-way street in which there
  are direct benefits not only to the Census Bureau
  but also to participating localities. The Census
  Bureau could adapt features of other
  federal-state statistical programs toward this
  end. For example, the Bureau should consider
  paying for a MAF/ TIGER/LUCA coordinator in each
  state, who would be a focal point for
  communication with localities.

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5
The 2000 Census Counting Under Adversity (2004)

• The Bureau should also give serious
  consideration to providing localities with
  updated MAF files, which would not only
  facilitate continuous updating of the MAF for the
  Bureaus purposes but would also provide a useful
  tool for local planning and analysis. An issue
  for concern would be that sharing of MAF files
  might violate the confidentiality of individuals
  for example, by disclosing overcrowding of
  housing units in violation of local codes.
  However, our view is that the confidentiality
  issues could be resolved street addresses do
  not, of themselves, identify information about
  individual residents or even indicate whether an
  address is occupied. However, Title 13 of the
  U.S. Code would probably require amendment
  similar to the 1994 legislation that authorized
  LUCA, since U.S. Supreme Court precedent
  Baldridge v. Shapiro views the MAF as covered
  under Title 13 confidentiality provisions.

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