XXIII. Immediate Advocacy Priorities

The remainder of the decade should be treated as a sequence of advocacy windows. Different decisions will become difficult to change at different points, so advocates should not wait for a single “final” 2030 Census design.

The priorities below focus on actions that can still influence the census before major requirements, systems, contracts, and production plans become fixed.

Through Baseline 2

The period before Baseline 2 should focus on obtaining the information needed to understand how Census is translating Baseline 1 into specific operational rules.

Obtain In-Office Enumeration decision rules. Advocates should seek the thresholds, contact requirements, data-quality standards, and exception rules that determine when a household may be counted without a direct response. The goal is to understand these rules before they are embedded in production systems.

Seek formal explanations of both Commerce DAOs. Census and Commerce should explain publicly how the English-language policy and disclosure avoidance policy apply to the decennial census, what discretion remains with Census leadership, and which elements of the original 2030 design must change as a result.

Press for content transparency. Census should disclose the status of major questionnaire-content decisions, including race and ethnicity, household relationships, citizenship, and other characteristics that may be affected by changes in statistical policy or departmental direction. Advocates should seek both the substantive proposal and the process by which it will be reviewed.

Review 2026 Test plans and metrics. Because the reduced 2026 Test cannot answer many of the questions originally assigned to it, advocates should identify what it will actually measure, what populations are missing, and which alternative research projects will fill those gaps. Evaluation criteria should be available before results are interpreted.

Request administrative-data quality studies. Census should publish the evidence supporting major administrative sources and their intended uses. Advocates should prioritize differential-quality results for populations and household types most likely to be poorly represented.

Track communications and printing procurements. Communications, multilingual materials, paper questionnaires, and other public-facing capabilities need sufficient lead time for research and testing. Procurement monitoring can provide early warning when important infrastructure is being delayed, reduced, or redesigned.

Seek Coverage Estimation design details. Advocates should understand which administrative data and matching systems will be shared with the census itself, where independent interviewing will remain, and how Census plans to test for correlated error.

Goal for Baseline 2: By the time Census publishes the next baseline, advocates should be able to identify the major operational rules that have become more specific, the evidence supporting them, and the decisions that remain genuinely open.

Before the 2028 Dress Rehearsal

The period between Baseline 2 and the Dress Rehearsal should focus on ensuring that the most consequential design choices receive realistic testing while meaningful correction is still possible.

Ensure the Dress Rehearsal tests the most consequential unresolved operations. The rehearsal should not simply confirm systems that are already effectively final. Its design should deliberately test the areas where evidence remains weakest or consequences are greatest.

Secure public Detailed Operational Plans. Advocates should press for sufficiently detailed plans to understand workflows, decision rules, responsibilities, and dependencies before the Dress Rehearsal begins.

Review field contact strategies. Contact attempts, proxy rules, stopping rules, language escalation, and transitions to administrative enumeration should be evaluated as a connected system rather than as separate efficiencies.

Evaluate language and accessibility systems. The Dress Rehearsal should provide realistic end-to-end testing of multilingual and accessible response options, including mail, internet, telephone, field support, and partner-facing materials.

Obtain demonstration data products under the replacement disclosure system. Data users need enough time to test whether redistricting, civil rights, tribal, rural, and small-population uses remain viable before the disclosure system is finalized.

Seek independent legal review of enumeration methods. By this stage, the design should be specific enough for meaningful legal analysis of IOE, administrative enumeration, questionnaire decisions, disclosure avoidance, and other methods likely to generate litigation risk.

Goal before the Dress Rehearsal: Every major unresolved design question should either be tested under realistic conditions or have a clearly identified alternative evidence base. The rehearsal should generate decisions, not merely confidence.

During Final Design and Production

After the Dress Rehearsal, the advocacy posture should shift. Opportunities for major redesign will narrow, while the risks associated with late changes, funding pressure, implementation failures, and political intervention will increase.

Monitor changes from Baseline 2 to Baseline 3. Advocates should maintain a clear record of major additions, removals, and modifications, particularly when changes occur after public testing or depart from earlier research findings.

Track funding and field-capacity reductions. Late savings proposals should receive heightened scrutiny because there will be little time to compensate for reductions in field staff, language services, communications, quality control, or other operational capacity.

Prepare rapid-response litigation and oversight strategies. Legal analysis, potential plaintiffs, congressional relationships, technical experts, and evidentiary needs should be developed before an emergency occurs. Waiting until a consequential late change is announced may leave too little time to respond before statutory deadlines.

Coordinate GOTC decisions across major community coalitions. Get-Out-the-Count organizations should share information about census design, confidentiality, language access, and emerging risks so that major communities are not forced to make outreach decisions independently. Where concerns arise about whether participation can be promoted safely and responsibly, coalitions should develop common standards for evaluating them.

Establish independent monitoring and archiving systems. Advocates should preserve Census plans, memoranda, technical documents, test reports, procurement records, public statements, and significant changes throughout the production period. Independent archives will make it easier to identify changes that occur quickly, reconstruct decisions later, and support congressional, legal, or scientific review.

Monitoring should intensify as Census Day approaches. Late operational changes deserve particular attention because they may receive less testing and public review than decisions made earlier in the decade.

Goal during final design and production: Protect against late degradation of the census while building the capacity to identify, document, and respond quickly to consequential changes.

A Coordinated Advocacy Calendar

No organization needs to pursue every priority. The stronger strategy is to divide responsibility across organizations with different expertise while maintaining a shared calendar of major Census decision points.

Civil rights organizations may lead on content, language, and voting-rights data. Statistical and research organizations may focus on administrative data, Coverage Estimation, and disclosure avoidance. Tribal organizations, state data centers, disability advocates, immigrant-serving organizations, and other community groups should lead where their knowledge and relationships are essential. Legal organizations can prepare challenges before emergency deadlines arise, while funders can support the research and infrastructure that no single advocacy organization can sustain.

The important point is coordination. The same Census decision may have legal, statistical, operational, and community consequences, and advocates will be more effective if those perspectives reach Census together rather than as disconnected concerns.

The advocacy agenda should therefore be maintained as a living document through 2030: updated when tests produce new evidence, when policies change, when procurement or funding creates new constraints, and when previously open decisions become fixed.

The final measure of success is not whether advocates win every methodological dispute. It is whether consequential decisions are made with adequate evidence, meaningful public scrutiny, and enough time to correct avoidable risks before they become part of the 2030 Census.