GAO: IT Modernization: Census Bureau Needs Reliable Cost and Schedule Estimates

Report Notice: GAO-24-105979

While the 2030 Decennial Census is still years away, keeping the Census Bureau’s IT systems modernized is critical to its mission.

The Bureau has begun 4 modernization programs for systems that collect, process, and disseminate data, but hasn’t fully implemented leading practices for managing requirements, cost, and schedule. Without reliable estimates, the Bureau increases its risk of cost overruns and unmet performance targets.

The Bureau has also begun creating plans to address many of the cybersecurity and privacy challenges it faced during the prior Census but hasn’t set timeframes for all of these efforts.

GAO is making five recommendations to the Department of Commerce related to managing requirements, estimating cost and schedule, and developing plans and time frames on cybersecurity and privacy challenges. Commerce concurred with the recommendations and stated it would take steps to improve in these areas.

• The Secretary of Commerce should direct the Director of the Census Bureau to ensure that the CEDSCI program consistently documents user stories to ensure bidirectional traceability with requirements.
• The Secretary of Commerce should direct the Director of the Census Bureau to ensure that the CEDSCI program develops reliable cost estimates using best practices described in GAO’s Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide, in particular those practices related to the comprehensive and credible characteristics.
• The Secretary of Commerce should direct the Director of the Census Bureau to ensure that the CEDSCI program develops its schedule using the best practices described in GAO’s Schedule Assessment Guide.
• The Secretary of Commerce should direct the Director of the Census Bureau to ensure that the OCIO incorporates key elements, such as time frames, into its DevSecOps strategy and finalizes it in a timely manner.
• The Secretary of Commerce should direct the Director of the Census Bureau to ensure that the American Community Survey program develops a plan, including time frames, for the steps they intend to take to determine the most appropriate methods to protect respondent privacy in the publicly available data releases.

Link to the full report here.

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