The U.S. Census Bureau is committed to:

• Supporting public access and equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data.
• Being transparent in the conduct of its mission while meeting its statutory and ethical obligations to protect respondent privacy, confidentiality, information, and system security.
• Promoting open science, increasing transparency, and supporting reproducibility.
• Being transparent with respondents about how their data are used.
• Protecting respondent privacy and confidentiality.
• Increasing trust in federal statistics and statistical products.

Open Census is an innovative undertaking that promotes open science practices within the Census Bureau. By providing the necessary infrastructure, guidance, and standardized metadata, Open Census empowers researchers to share their work effectively, including research articles, code, and data. This fosters collaboration, transparency, and innovation within the Census Bureau and with the broader research community. 

The Census Bureau meets the requirements in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP’s) August 25, 2022, memorandum “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” to develop public access policies. This ensures easy public access to and long‑term preservation of Census Bureau peer‑reviewed publications and scientific data, supporting their use in research, education, and scientific discovery.

The Census Bureau considered comments on a plan to provide access to results of federally funded research before developing policies. The Federal Register Notice, plan, and comments received are publicly posted (Docket USBC-2023-0015).