Doesn't the government already have the information requested on the American Community Survey (ACS)?

The Census Bureau does use statistics from other government agencies for research and evaluations to improve our surveys and censuses and better understand the information we are collecting. We also use such information to help develop estimates of the population between census years. However, we cannot use other agencies' information in place of actual responses to the ACS for several reasons.

These statistics, called administrative records:

• do not contain information for everyone
• may not be usable because of differences in collection periods
• or definitions may not be as current as the information that we collect