The government is planning an Internet response option for the 2020 decennial census, but it’s not clear if the Census Bureau will be ready with computing infrastructure by the time operational design decisions are due at the end of September 2015, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The GAO also has concerns about the ability of the Census to estimate costs associated with developing an Internet response.
The Census Bureau hopes that using the Internet to collect Census data will result in cost savings over the 2010 enumeration, and will encourage fuller response among the U.S. population. But technological hurdles remain, including how the Census will validate responses from survey participants.
