The U.S. Census Bureau completed self-response tests for the 2020 online census system in Providence, Rhode Island, Fedscoop reported Monday.
According to the results, 52 out of 61 percent of households responded to the test online without the use of advertising campaigns. The rest of the responses were recorded through mail and by phone. The agency plans to use a geographical information systems tools to locate people’s addresses and encourage them to participate in the census.
“In our test, real people were able to use the technology in real world conditions,” said Albert Fontenot Jr., associate director of decennial census programs at the Census Bureau. “We are currently working to make sure that all our systems can scale up and perform effectively to handle the level of work that we expect for the 2020 census.”