The Census Bureau Needs to Improve Management and Oversight of Vetting Employees to Avoid Hiring Unsuitable Individuals for Federal Employment

Our evaluation was conducted as part of a series of reviews to determine whether the Bureau’s planning and execution of 2020 Census peak operations successfully reduced the risk to decennial census data quality and costs. Overall, we found that the Bureau continues to face longstanding challenges in providing sufficient governance for its personnel suitability program, which is necessary to ensure that background investigation requirements are met at its facilities. Specifically, we found the following: I. The Bureau continues to have a significant backlog of post-employment cases requiring adjudication and the actual number of cases requiring adjudication is questionable. II. Inadequate documentation and oversight have allowed quality problems regarding post-employment background investigations to persist. III. Census Investigative Services did not properly adjudicate results for an estimated 7 percent of temporary 2020 Census pre-employment, fingerprint-only investigations. IV. The Census Hiring and Employment Check system data is incomplete and, in some instances, inaccurate.