Welcome. Thanks to all of you for coming this morning.
I am here to give you some background on the role of communications for
the census. I will talk about lessons learned as we approach the 2010 Census,
some of the challenges, how the plan for 2010 differs from that for the 2000
Census and finally tell you about a few new data sets that may be useful to
you.
First, let’s set the stage with the video montage we showed last year at
Industry Day. It is a composite of many efforts to encourage people to
answer Census 2000. Many of you have already seen this. But this time I’d
like to use it to illustrate one of the themes you no doubt noticed in the RFP
– integration. The census has many parents – from Census Bureau
employees who conduct and promote the census to the many stakeholders
who help us to get the best count possible. They are tribal governments, state
and local governments, businesses, community groups, news media,
teachers, and the list goes on and on. This video shows you samples of
advertising both paid and free created by the previous contractor as well as
by census partners. It has news clips, events, special promotions such as
Census in Schools and the road tour created by the contractor. It has
materials and events produced by partners. As you look at this video, think
about how all of these efforts in support of the census can be better
integrated – to increase their impact and to use resources more effectively.
That is a big challenge.
(show video)
So, the first lesson learned from Census 2000 - and we heard this also from
many of you during market research – was that all of the partnership and
marketing efforts can be better integrated. What does that mean? It means
we need to do a better job of educating the Contractor about census
operations so that the communications campaign supports operations
seamlessly. It means that the Contractor designs a campaign that takes
advantage of the very large number of partners and stakeholders who are
willing to help p