TALKING POINTS FOR KENNETH PREWITT

2/28 OPERATIONAL NEWS BRIEFING

Good Morning, I see some new faces here today. I know you all have a special interest in a story reported late last week and we will get to that. However, this is one in a periodic series of Operational Press Briefings and in fairness to those who are here with that expectation, I want to first detail the status of Census 2000 as of today.

UPDATE/LEAVE

Our first major labor-intensive operation is ready to begin on schedule this Friday March 3 and run through March 30. In this operation, we will hand deliver the questionnaires to about 20 million housing units, mostly in rural areas.

We have already hired and trained about 73,000 temporary workers for this job. They will update address lists and maps. And they will leave the questionnaire package with someone in the household. If no one is at home, they will leave the package in a plastic bag on a door knob.

RECRUITMENT

The census is truly a national mobilization effort. It requires a massive turnout of job applicants to fill the large work force needed -- about half a million workers to fill over 860,000 different short-term local census jobs. As of last week, we continue to be ahead of schedule in this recruitment drive.

Our overall recruiting goal is to interest three million applicants to reach our actual hiring goals. By last week we have tested over two million applicants.

Not all applicants qualify, of course. The most important benchmark is whether we're attracting "qualified" applicants. In this respect we're currently four percentage points ahead of our schedule. Last week our qualified applicant pool reached 1.7 million. That's 69 percent of our objective, which is to find a total of 2.4 million people interested in, and qualified for, these jobs.

CENSUS IN SCHOOLS

All schools -- K-12 -- have been invited to participate in teaching about Census 2000 through the Census in Schools project. This has been one of our most successful and innovative promotional efforts ever. By last week we have shipped over 1.2 million teacher kits -- containing lesson plans, wall maps, and take-home materials -- to schools around the nation.

In addition, numerous Members of Congress, Cabinet and other federal officials are taking the message of Census 2000 to students in their classrooms.

As just one example, last week at the Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Washington, DC, students heard about Census 2000 from Commerce Secretary William Daley, White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, DC Mayor Anthony Williams and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Perhaps more important to these kids, they also heard from Sesame Street's muppet character "The Count" who made a personal appearance to explain why the census needs to count them too.

The next big step begins Monday, March 13, which starts "Teach Census Week," when we hope every classroom in America will have a census lesson taught.

ROAD TOUR

In another innovation, we have commissioned 12 rolling Census 2000 promotional vehicles -- large vans specially outfitted inside and out to carry our message that the census is coming. We call it the "Road Tour."

The national Road Tour kick-off came February 16 live on NBC's "Today" Show. Other appearances have been in Los Angeles at the Grammy Music Awards event. And in Chicago at an event attended by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

For the next six weeks, the 12 vans will be on the road and enable our staff to reach tens of thousands of people at stops along the way. At shopping malls. Schools. Ethnic festivals. And community centers.

In just one week already the vans have made over 190 stops and generated coverage on 170 media outlets along their routes around America and more that 75,000 people have seen the vans in their communities.

HOW AMERICA KNOWS WHAT AMERICA NEEDS

There is our challenge to America. This challenge is to participate in the census, and to help us make Census 2000 into a unique civic ceremony, one which celebrates our diversity and summarizes our needs.

For the Census Bureau, this means we must present the census to every household in this country as much more than just a statistical head count and data base. Instead, we must show -- through our paid advertising and our thousands of partnerships -- that the census is in fact the measure by which America knows what America needs.

For every community in this country, this means setting a local goal to increase participation in Census 2000 -- and then to meet that goal by raising the questionnaire response rate in each community by at least 5 percentage points over the last census in 1990.

We're calling the program '90 Plus Five. By last week we have enlisted more than 2600 participants in this effort, including 11 of the largest cities -- Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Washington DC, Fort Worth, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Baltimore.

State governments are also joining -- so far including California, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina -- and also Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

Starting March 27, we will post response rates for every locality on the Internet. These rates will be updated daily through April 11.

If we succeed with '90 Plus Five, we will raise the nation's total Census 2000 response rate to 70 percent, five points higher than 1990. That will mean millions fewer houses we'll need to check by going door-to-door in what we call "Non Response Follow Up."

ADVANCE LETTER MAILOUT

As you know from these operational briefings, we usually try to alert you to the next major activity and describe that in more detail. We had long ago planned to discuss what we call the "Advance Letter" since our schedule called for it to begin arriving in American mailboxes this coming week.

The advance letter is a new feature in the 2000 Census, the result of rigorous testing during the last decades, which is intended to promote awareness that Census questionnaires are on their way. In fact, it appears that we have already generated some awareness.

During the next two weeks, the U.S. Postal Service will deliver 115 million advance letters, mailed first-class, alerting people that the Census 2000 questionnaires will soon be arriving at their home.

This letter is the first of three deliveries from the Census Bureau. The others are the questionnaire package itself, and a reminder postcard.

Let me say up front that we already know that the Postal Service will be unable to deliver 5 to 7 percent of these letters as addressed.

The reason is that we have created our Master Address File by being as inclusive as possible. We have solicited address information from all possible sources. We have field checked every address. However, when an address remains uncertain, we have given it the benefit of the doubt to ensure that it receives all possible chances of enumeration.

In addition, the USPS is delivering the advance letter in rural areas. However, rural addresses are not compatible with the Census 2000 geographic processing systems (we cannot automatically assign a rural address to a block face). Therefore, we develop the address list and deliver the questionnaires in these areas using census enumerators. In order to raise census awareness in these areas we have attempted to send an advance letter when we believe we have a mailing address. Past experience shows that a portion of our addresses for these areas will not be consistent with those that the USPS uses for delivery.

On Tuesday, we learned that there is a problem in the printing of the house number on the address line of the advance letter. It is not a problem with our address lists themselves. You will ask -- how did this happen and how certain are you that it will not happen again? I will address both questions, but first put the problem in a larger context.

The problem is "cosmetic" rather than operational. In describing the problem as "cosmetic" I do not intend to trivialize it. The public image of the census is nearly as important as the actual operations of the census, and indeed the image can affect operations -- because the census does finally depend upon public cooperation.

The advance letters will be delivered by USPS to the correct households. Moreover, the address mistake does not affect any other census operation. Whereas the barcode in the advance letter does connect to other operations, the household address line does not. In absolutely no way does the mistake put Census 2000 at risk. It will not affect the census count for 2000.

Here is our key message to the public. When the letter arrives, the American people should open and read the letter, not discard it or try to return it.

Starting next Wednesday, March 1, the first batch of these advance letters will arrive in rural areas. About 17 million households, those with rural-type addresses, will receive this letter.

Then, the second batch of advance letters -- addressed to households in areas with what we call city-style addresses -- will begin delivery Monday, March 6. About 98 million households will receive this letter.

The crucial moment for Census 2000 only comes about one week later. That's when households will receive the correct questionnaires to fill out and return by mail to the Census Bureau.

This advance letter simply gives a "heads up" to people on why the census is important. We think that when people are informed, they'll make the decision to fill out the form and send it back. Our research indicates that this heads-up will improve response rate by one to two percent.

Equally important, the advance letters provide an opportunity for households which need a form in any one of five languages other than

English to request one in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese or Tagalog.

As you can see from the displayed example, the bottom of the letter contains a notice to this effect. In five languages, it asks people to turn over the letter. On the back side, there's further explanation -- "in language" -- on what people need to do. It's simple. They should check the appropriate box and return the form in the enclosed, postage-paid return envelope. That's all.

We will take additional steps to mobilize nearly 6,000 local, regional and national organizations who are already our partners and who serve the concerned population groups.

Together with all our partners, we will mount a comprehensive outreach effort including letters, telephone, flyers and posters, as well as targeted paid advertising. Our message will stress that the letter is important and that it was delivered to the correct address.

We will urge every household to open and read their advance letter -- because that's the only way to request the foreign-language form, which must be specially coded for that specific household address.

We are confident in the effectiveness of both our message and the strategy to implement it.

The GPO is investigating exactly how the error occurred.

This error doesn't affect the accuracy of the address in the eyes of the Postal Service and its letter carriers. That address -- in USPS bar-coded form, with zip plus four -- is correct. The household address is also correct on the Census Bureau's separate bar-coded information for that address.

We know that it's the right advance letter for the right address. So does the Postal Service. And so should the person who gets it in the mail. There are two reasons why.

First, the codes used to sort the letters for the letter carriers are not affected by this anomaly. The automated sorting equipment will function correctly and place the letter where it ought to go in the rack for the correct order of mail delivery.

Second, the Postal Service has alerted all of its local post offices to be sure that all letter carriers are aware of the problem in the address line. The Census Bureau is grateful to the Postal Service for its rapid and efficient response on the issue under discussion, and of course for its reassurance that the formatting error will not affect delivery.

Bottom line on the address line -- This mail will go through to the right address. Every recipient should open and read the letter. Most recipients won't need a foreign language form so they have no need to respond to this letter at all.

For those who do, they can use the letter to request the foreign language form, and the system in place will work.

Having described the mistake I do wish to emphasize that the Census Bureau's Quality Control procedures failed to detect it. While we cannot accept responsibility for the mistake itself, we accept full responsibility for our failure to detect it.

Incidentally, one press report suggested that I "blamed" the printer. This is not entirely correct. I described as best I could what happened, but "blame" is not a word I used or would use. I say this not to quibble with the press report, which was accurate in all important respects -- but only to emphasize that responsibility rests with our Quality Control procedures. On this particular item, they were inadequate.

I have instructed staff to re-scrub everyone of our 24 major Quality Control procedures. That review is underway.

Is it possible that an error of this sort will happen again? Though anything is possible, the odds are so low that my honest advice to you is to look elsewhere for your next census story.

If not an error of this sort, will something else go wrong in the census? Probably. The census is a vast, multiple-part and rapidly moving system, involving hundreds of operations and hundreds of thousands of recently hired employees. Something could go wrong. Whatever and whenever that something is, it is my confident expectation that it will not put the census itself at risk.

At the present time, based on what we know about the robustness of our operations, the only thing that could put the census at risk, other than a natural disaster, is a significantly lower than expected mailback response rate.

When the census form arrives, the major task for the Census Bureau will be complete. When the form arrives, the responsibility shifts from the government to the people.

This is the moment of truth, when the most simple act -- taking pen in hand to paper -- will have the most profound consequences.