Census already planning 2020 Internet count

The 2010 Census isn't off the ground yet, but the bureau is planning ahead. Daniel Weinberg, the assistant director for the Decennial Census and American Community, is coming up with ways to improve the massive undertaking 10 years from now. And that includes using the Internet to count the population in 2020.

"Each census is a 10-year cycle of planning and testing and research," Weinberg tells the Washington Post. "We set a very high bar to automate as much as the process as possible for 2010, and we didn't succeed as much as we would have liked. We need to carry that over to 2020."

Technology is moving ahead slowly for the 2010, but it will become a bigger piece of the count in 10 years, he says.

The Census Bureau plans to launch a number of pilot tests using the Internet in the next several years, and will study how Canada and the United Kingdom use the Internet for their counts. One possible option for the future: Mail Internet links to households with user ID's and passwords tied to the housing unit.

"It sounds simple but there is a big issue with security. One of the reasons we are not using the Internet in this current census is that we haven't figured out the security problems," Weinberg says.

Today, there is no nationwide database linking email addresses and home addresses, and that will be key to using the Internet, he says.

For more on the 2020 Census:
- see this Washington Post article

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