This memorandum documents specific updates that have been made to the plan for the Update Leave (UL) operation since the release of the Update Leave Detailed Operational Plan (DOP) on June 25, 2018, and subsequent publication of an errata sheet on March 31, 2020. The errata sheet documented the absorption of military areas into the Update Leave geography and operation, as well as other minor updates. This second operational updates document summarizes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the plan and implementation of the operation. There will not be an additional publication of the 2020 Census UL DOP.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all fieldwork and any ongoing staff trainings for the 2020 Census were temporarily suspended on March 18, 2020. The suspension was essential in order to adhere to guidance from health authorities and to develop new enhanced safety measures. The Census Bureau worked to ensure all federal, state, and local guidance was incorporated into operational procedures before field operations were restarted.

The Census Bureau announced in a May 4, 2020 news release that select area census offices (ACOs) would begin reopening and that operations such as UL would begin work again using enhanced operational procedures. Census Bureau decisions were made after a thorough review of the operating status of a state, local, or tribal area, taking into account the key data that support that operating status, as well as the ability of Census Bureau staff to safely resume operations. In addition, the Census Bureau monitored on an ongoing basis the impacts of COVID-19 on all 2020 Census operations.

There were significant impacts to the UL operation because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were also minor technical adjustments made to the planned system functionalities to accommodate the temporary suspension. A summary of the impacts to each major aspect of the operation along with the location of the original description within the DOP appears below.

The pandemic affected many facets of the UL operation, including training, supporting systems, production, and quality control. The following sections provide the plan changes to each component of the operation.

Section 3.1.4.2—Conduct UL-Specific Training, pages 45-46: UL training was scheduled to be conducted on a rolling basis, with cohorts of census field supervisors (CFSs), production enumerators, and quality control (QC) enumerators being trained in waves over an approximately four-week period. Training began in mid-February for CFSs and in early March for enumerators. Training for production enumerators was complete, and production UL had begun on March 15, 2020, before UL fieldwork was suspended on March 18, 2020. After the May 4, 2020, announcement from Census Bureau senior management staff, offices were reopened on a rolling basis, and work restarted in the open areas.

Because of the lengthy operational suspension, UL Field Division staff offered refresher trainings to all staff who decided to return to work. All active CFSs and enumerators received online refresher trainings. The online refresher trainings were done through online modules, reading/completing checklists, and by reviewing refresher pages and guides. All materials presented during the refresher trainings resided on the laptop devices provided to the CFSs and enumerators.

Training for QC enumerators was incomplete when fieldwork was halted. After the May 4, 2020, announcement, the first cohort of QC enumerators restarted QC Capstone Day of training on May 14, 2020. Capstone Day was completed at home (rather than in a classroom as originally planned), and trainees had conference calls with their trainers/supervisors for additional assistance and guidance. For any replacement-training sessions that occurred once the field operation resumed, trainees only attended one in-person class within which three lessons were facilitated:

• Appointment and orientation lesson.
• Receipt of device walkthrough lesson.
• Introduction to operating the device lesson.

In order to properly social distance, and to mitigate exposure, these one-day in-person classes were conducted as smaller classroom sessions with fewer trainees. The remainder of the trainings were done outside the classroom, during which the trainees were required to carefully review the lessons on their own and had conference calls with their trainers/supervisors. During the conference calls, the trainers/supervisors provided guidance and answered any questions or concerns that arose.

Section 3.2—Update Leave (UL) Operational Workload Management, pages 46-47: During the suspension, UL Decennial Census Management Division (DCMD) operational owners worked with system owners to ensure systems would be primed for production whenever suspensions were lifted, and fieldwork could resume. To accommodate the suspension, certain supporting and monitoring systems were placed in maintenance mode or were shifted to a temporary downtime. Maintenance mode helped prevent/delay automatic cyclical processes, such as the creation and delivery of fieldwork packages or the dissemination of alerts through the Field Operations Control System (FOCS). Amendments were made within time, expense, and cost tracking systems to ensure staff profiles remained active, and to accommodate staff charging a specialized COVID-19 code during the suspension.

Section 3.3—Update Leave Data Collection, page 52:

A summary of impacts for each aspect of the production work is captured in the list below.

• Duration.
  • ACOs reopened on a rolling/phased basis.
    • All 169 UL ACOs were reopened by early June.
  • The duration of the implementation/execution phase went from the planned 33 days of production/QC to approximately five months (3/15 – 8/13).
• Tracking Methodology.
  • Tracking of production and QC progress, and tracking of costs, had to be amended to account for the COVID-19 duration extensions and modified task/charge codes.
  • FOCS automatically resolved some alerts triggered during the suspension including “Overtime Claimed,” “Block No Progress,” and “Stale” alerts. Alerts that FOCS could not automatically resolve required manual reconciliation from CFSs/CFMs.

Section 3.3.2—List Address, page 56:

Fieldwork procedures were modified to minimize person-to-person contact. Enumerators no longer conducted a contact attempt at a housing unit. Any updates to an address were conducted by observation only including identifying any hidden or unseen housing units that did not appear in the listing device.

Section 3.3.5—Determine QC Results, page 59:

Because of the modified fieldwork procedures, QC enumerators followed production procedures by only verifying the address through observation.

A non-COVID change for the UL process involved a minor update to the process for completing a block collection unit (BCU), which is part of the process for Perform UL Data Collection. As part of the process Complete BCU, a step was added to clarify that after a person marks an assignment as complete, there is an automated step to create block outcome data files before providing listing status data and linking IDs to the Response Processing Operation (RPO).

Replacement diagrams for section 3.3 on page 51 and section 3.3.6 on page 60 are shown below with the added activity 30.90, Create Block Outcome Data Files.

Section 3.3-- Update Leave Data Collection, page 51:

Section 3.3.6-- Complete BCU, page 60:

New Section: 3.3.6.2 Create Block Outcome Data Files, page 60

After the enumerator has worked all the addresses in their assigned BCU and marked the BCU as complete, the Listing and Mapping Application (LiMA) will proceed to create the block outcome data files. The block outcome data files will be transmitted for processing of listing results and will contain all the address updates and fieldwork designations for all living quarters in the completed BCU.

The numbering for the next section will be updated from 3.3.6.2 to 3.3.6.3.

Table 3 of the errata sheet contains references that did not get published correctly. Some of the as performed updates also apply to this table. This table should be presented as the following: