“The U.S. government reported spending $22.7 million on such promotional products as part of a major awareness campaign, according to the Advertising Specialty Institute.”
Read the full story here at Promo Magazine.
The following statement comes to me from Stephen Buckner of the Census Bureau’s Public Information Office:
Statement on O’Keefe Taping of Census Bureau Staff
“Census Bureau policies and training are clear and require all employees to honestly submit accurate time records. Workers are instructed to report hours they work, which would include their time traveling to and from training. This is no different than the training session that Mr. O’Keefe attended in New Jersey, and during his previous employment with the Census Bureau last year. In his video, Mr. O’Keefe, an admitted criminal, does not disclose that he previously worked for the Census Bureau for nearly 2 months in 2009 without incident, allegation or complaint. That employment with us was well before his indictment and prior to his conviction of a federal crime last week. The Census Bureau obviously does not condone any falsifying of or tampering with timesheets by its employees. We are investigating the allegations in Mr. O’Keefe’s selectively edited video and will take appropriate administrative action with staff as warranted. ”Background:
· Policies, procedures and training sessions clearly instruct employees to record the hours they work, which includes payment for the actual time traveling to and from training sessions. Mr. O’Keefe clearly did not include that, or the fact that part of his raw footage also shows trainers instructing new employees that they must record their mileage accurately.
· Mr. O’Keefe implies that the tapings occurred while he was still employed by the Census Bureau. In fact, most of his video taping took place after his Census Bureau employment ended. The Census Bureau’s stringent background check disqualifies individuals with pending federal charges or criminal offenses. After O’Keefe’s background check came back, he quit before any action could be taken.
· None of the other new hires or Census Bureau staff attending the training sessions that were taped were notified or granted permission to be filmed in Mr. O’Keefe’s video. Many states have laws against such surreptitious tapings.
· Mr. O’Keefe, like all census workers, took a confidentiality oath for life to protect census data — the Census Bureau cannot by law disclose any personal information about a household or respondent that could identify them. We take this very seriously at the Census Bureau.
Last week, I planned to publish this piece, but the data from a New York area census office didn’t come in until yesterday…Check it out:
Here’s the hard evidence:
10-02 DISPOSITION OF 2010 GQAV MATERIALS (1)
10-10 DISPOSITION OF 2010 QAC MATERIALS
It seems like the Census didn’t know April 22nd was Earth Day. In honor of it the printers ran non stop from morning to midnight in 494 offices across the nation printing out all the address listing pages and assignment preparation for Non Response Followup.
Cost to print NRFU Address Listing Pages of every housing unit in the United States single sided and then ship it to the National Processing Center Fed Ex Priority Overnight
Cost to print out hundreds upon thousands of maps single sided only to not even be looked at
Cost to print all the training materials on high quality printer quality paper
Cost to print all the glossy recruiting brochures, partnership posters only for them to be unopened and thrown out by the palette like this everyday (see pictures below)
– Some food for thought. These boxes are filled with 500 brochures a piece and has been happening everyday for months and in all 494 offices everyday –
Cost to print all the Be Counted Questionnaires which were all taken back from the Be Counted and Questionnaire Assistance Centers to be thrown away even though New York City wanted to extend the program by 30 days and some to count the estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants.(see attached disposal list)
Cost to print all the GQV Questionnaires which we still have two palettes left. (see attached disposal list) And that is just one of the forms on the attached list to throw out…Here we go:
10-02 DISPOSITION OF 2010 GQAV MATERIALS (1)
10-10 DISPOSITION OF 2010 QAC MATERIALS
Photos of materials on their way to be destroyed/recycled:
We didn’t cover Earth Day (which was earlier this week) on this site, so here’s our belated Census Bureau Earth Day tribute…The Census Bureau is now printing the address listing pages and other assignment-related materials for the massive non-response follow-up (NRFU) operations. It seems like the Census didn’t care because all the printers ran non stop 24 hours to print out many documents (details of which are coming soon)…
*Apologies for an earlier version of this post that only semi-listed the materials printed. We will hopefully have a complete list by Monday…
Check out the letter from Rep. Patrick McHenry, ranking member on the subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives that was sent to the Census Bureau on Monday: Cost Overrun Letter 10/19/09
H/t to Hope Yen of the AP:
WASHINGTON — The head of the Census Bureau on Wednesday expressed concern about cost overruns in preparations for next year’s high-stakes count, saying he was taking steps to help prevent the expenses from ballooning further.
Appearing before a House panel, Robert Groves said poor planning had resulted in added costs in the address canvassing operation that were $88 million higher than the original estimate of $356 million, an overrun of 25 percent.
Groves said the agency had made some faulty assumptions in how quickly it could get work done. The agency was now re-evaluating budget estimates for the entire census operation, which is projected to cost roughly $15 billion.
“Those budget overruns are intolerable,” he told a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee.
