A New Technology to Count On for Census Trials

Census

The US Census Bureau held a press conference last week with panelists. Standing from left, US  Census Bureau Program Manager, Eduardo Guity; Cecil Fong of the Chinese Community Center; M.J. Khan, former Houston City Councilman; MD Mahabub Rahim, Area Manager of Operations, US Census Bureau; Teresa Caldaro, Regional Manager of Operations, US Census Bureau; Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House and Shah Haleem, President, Bangladesh Association of Houston.
Photo: Jawahar Malhotra

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: The Bayou City has a special role to play in the way that all the people in the US are counted and the process that started this past February is almost at an end. Now, it’s up to the hard task of contacting the people who didn’t respond electronically, a task that’s expected to take till mid-June, to finish off the data collection work.

So for a certain percent of the 225,000 people who live in the 15 zipcodes in Harris County who haven’t responded, expect a visit from a trained enumerator to help get the answers over the next four weeks.

Over 600 enumerators were hired since February, from the more than 3,000 who applied, from among all the ethnic communities that comprise the diverse population of Houston (see IAN dated Feb 12, 2016), and trained to collect the data using a new technology that the Census Bureau is testing in our area, as well as in Los Angeles County, California. In Houston, the enumeration will be done in zip codes 77024, 77036, 77040, 77041, 77042, 77043, 77055, 77056, 77057, 77063, 77077, 77079, 77080, 77082 and 77092, effectively from 610 West to Highway 6 and Westpark Tollroad to Hwy 290.

This past Thursday, May 12, the local office of the Census Bureau at 9990 Richmond at Briarpark, held a press conference over lunch to share their work and ask the members of the local Asian ethnic media to spread the word in their communities. The US Census Bureau was represented by Program Manager, Eduardo Guity; MD Mahabub Rahim, Area Manager of Operations and Teresa Caldaro, Regional Manager of Operations.

Guity introduced and emceed the conference, which featured a panel of well-known community leaders who spoke from experience in their own communities. These were Cecil Fong of the Chinese Community Center; M.J. Khan, former Houston City Councilman; Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House and Shah Haleem, President, Bangladesh Association of Houston. Guity explained that Houston and Los Angeles were chosen as they look like what the rest of the US is expected to look like in the future.

Caldaro explained that the USCB has been working on this trial test program since last October and that many people had responded electronically already but many more remained unresponsive and so 600 people had been hired to perform the NRFU – Non Responsive Follow Up. “This will help us to see if the new cellphone technology and our back office systems are cost effective to implement for the decennial census surveys,” Caldaro said. Rahim added that the census was important for allocating federal resources to the communities with the most people and needs.

Haleem, Fong and Kumar expressed their community’s interest in being correctly represented and hence have made their community centers available for use by the USCB for testing, hiring and training of enumerators. Khan, who was Councilman for six years and is still deeply involved in the Pakistani community, gave a glimpse of the impact of census numbers, saying that after the last census, Texas gained four new representatives in Congress. The number of seats is frozen at 435, but contractions and expansion of populations across states results in shifting representation. Asian represent about 6 per cent of the population “but the minority community needs to understand that first you need to be at the table to be heard,” declared Khan.