The U.S. Census Bureau's career staffers valiantly conducted the 2020 census under unprecedented challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, but new privacy protocols meant to protect the confidentiality of participants degraded the resulting data, according to a report released Tuesday.
Key innovations such as encouraging most participants to fill out the census questionnaire online and permitting the use of administrative records from government agencies including the IRS and the Social Security Administration when households hadn't responded allowed the statistical agency to conduct the census ''amidst an unceasing array of challenges," an independent evaluation released by a panel of experts from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said.
