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State's Census Effort Moving Apace; More RFPs Coming

California Complete Count, the state's office handling the 2020 federal census, reports that RFPs are coming as the effort for an accurate count gears up.

California Complete Count — Census 2020 Office, the government entity that’s working to boost the state’s accuracy and representation in the federal 2020 census, is reporting that so far, only two of California’s 58 counties have opted in for state funding for their counts.

In an update report to the Legislature published Friday afternoon, the census office notes that on Nov. 9, it “sent letters to all 58 counties, providing them an opportunity to opt in or out of state Census funding for outreach.  … The deadline for counties to respond is Feb. 8, 2019. To date, the Census Office has received opt-in letters from two counties, Colusa and Yolo. The State will work with any county that needs an extension on its deadline to help facilitate participation in the program.” More than $26 million in funding is available to counties for these efforts. 

Meanwhile, the deadline for statewide Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to submit proposals in a public information campaign to boost census participation is Feb. 15; the RFP was issued Jan. 4.

The state has designated $4,050,000 for various statewide Community Based Organizations that will be charged with “targeting outreach efforts towards specific hard-to-count demographic populations on a statewide basis.” The census notes that the state will supplement that amount with an additional $5,950,000 from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget targeting hard-to-count population groups.

Feb. 15 is also the deadline for regional Administrative Community Based Organizations (ACBOs) to respond to an RFP on how they would perform population outreach on behalf of the state. That RFP was issued on Dec. 4, and 84 entities responded. The notification of contract awards is scheduled to be issued in March 2019. The census report includes a detailed timeline of funding.  

Vendors seeking opportunities with the Census Office may sign up for notifications and get more information on its solicitations page. 

Technology is playing a key role in the state’s census effort, the report notes.

“The Census Office has developed the Statewide Outreach and Rapid Deployment (SwORD) mapping portal to foster data sharing, coordination and collaboration in a user-friendly format,” it says. “SwORD provides informed planning and decision-making data for the Census Office’s outreach and messaging partners. To create SwORD, the Census Office collaborated with the geographic information system (GIS) mapping and spatial data analytics company, Esri, to leverage their ArcGIS Hub, a commercial, off-the-shelf product. The first iteration of SwORD was completed in November 2018 with a focus on how Census stakeholders will plan, educate, and activate outreach efforts for the 2020 Census." The $658,814 Esri contract includes planning, designing and deploying a SwORD mapping portal.  

In all, the state has already approved $90.3 million for "a comprehensive statewide outreach and communication strategy that targets the State’s hardest-to-count residents to ensure full participation in the 2020 U.S. Census (2020 Census)."

Newsom's proposed budget includes an additional $54 million to bolster that strategy and "conduct a housing and population enumeration of Californians separate and apart from the 2020 Census."

"With so much at risk for the state," the Census Office report says, the "investment will help ensure a successful and accurate 2020 Census count." 

Dennis Noone is Executive Editor of Industry Insider. He is a career journalist, having worked at small-town newspapers and major metropolitan dailies including USA Today in Washington, D.C.