As a valued stakeholder to the Census Bureau, we want to inform you about
some key changes we are making in order to be a prudent steward of the taxpayers’money and fulfill our mission to provide the country important statistical information.
Today, we are announcing a realignment of our national field office structure and management reforms designed to keep pace with modern survey collection methods worldwide and reduce costs by an estimated $15 - $18 million annually beginning in 2014.
Over the next 18 months we will transition to a new supervisory structure to
manage some almost 7,000 professional interviewers. The changes will result inpermanently closing six of our 12 Regional Offices and a reduction of the national field workforce of about 115-130 positions. Most of the reductions will happen through attrition, early retirements, or transfers to vacant jobs at Census headquarters or elsewhere. The six Regional Offices that will close are Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Kansas City and Seattle. The six Regional Offices that will remain open are Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. Advances in technology have allowed survey organizations to provide better tools to their field interviewers and move to a leaner management structure. More “virtualization” of supervision using more timely management information can yield both cost and quality advantages. We want to keep pace with these innovations. Our professional field interviewers are the front line of producing the nation’s vital statistics about our economy, our communities, and our households. We owe it to the nation to constantly improve our processes and become more efficient. More than 20 percent of the interview workload involves conducting surveys for
other federal statistical agencies. Our customers are confronting tighter fiscal budgets as well, and have challenged us to improve our systems. Indeed, the nation depends upon us to slow the cost inflation in our survey work if we are to maintain the highest quality statistics. As we go through this transition over the next 18 months, our Regional Office employees who are affected by this realignment are our first priority.
The closing of six Regional Offices was a difficult decision and one that will
produce disruption and pain in the lives of our colleagues in those offices. We are committed to employ all methods legally possible to reduce the negative impact of this change on our affected employees.
For more detailed information on this transition, please visit:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellaneous/realignment.html
/Swedish:/ Som stor fan av statistik med nära vänner som US Census och svenska SCB, och i tron att det kan intressera någon annan, lägger jag ut denna text vars hopträngdhet må förlåtas.
PS Vad vore livet utan fotboll, musik och statistik (mina drömyrken: spela första fiol i Berlinerfilharmonikerna, spela (vara) spjutspets i FC Barcelona vid sidan av Messi och Maradonas svärson (troligen nyförvärv) och vara ensam rådgivare hos SCB) ?
