The Census Bureau is planning a 2019 Census Test to better plan for nonresponse follow-up operations and communications strategies for the 2020 Census. This 2019 Census Test plans to ask a nationally representative sample of 480,000 households to answer the planned 2020 Census questions. The test is designed to measure the operational effect of including a citizenship question on self-response rates; it is planned to be a split panel test, with one panel including the citizenship question and the other not. The first mailing is planned to go out mid-June 2019, with data collection ending on August 15, 2019.

Work continues on the analysis of the results of the 2018 End-to-End Census Test. The final report on the Address Canvassing Operation will be reviewed in December and important lessons learned have already been incorporated into the operation. Data from the peak operations conducted last Spring and Summer are currently being reviewed. One result of this analysis is an important change to the treatment of the housing units identified as vacant/delete after the application of administrative records to the Nonresponse Followup (NRFU) operation. During the test we visited households that were determined to be vacant or nonexistent based on our review of the administrative data. A significant proportion of these, 18.5% of those identified as vacant and 29.7% of those identified as deletes, were found to be occupied. Accordingly, in the 2020 Census we will now visit each household in the vacant/delete universe at least once at the beginning of NRFU. If a household appears to be occupied it will be interviewed or included in NRFU for followup visits.

The final operations for the 2018 End-to-End Test are well underway. The Census Unedited File (CUF) containing the raw response data from the 2018 End-to-End Census Test will be delivered for further processing and creation of the Census Edited File (CEF). The CEF contains the complete demographic characteristics associated with the response data. We are on track to produce the prototype data product for redistricting by late March.

We continue to build the field infrastructure and recruit and hire staff needed for the offices and early operations, and our work on the Integrated Partnership and Communications Program is proceeding on schedule.