The U.S. Census Bureau's Efforts to Ensure an Accurate Address List Raise Concerns over Design and Lack of Cost-Benefit Analysis

This report addresses the status of the Census Bureau’s (the bureau’s) 2020 Census program preparation and planning efforts. Our audit objectives were to (1) assess the methods and costs of continuously updating the Master Address File Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing database (MTdb);(2) determine how efforts, such as the fiscal year (FY) 2015 Address Validation Test (AVT), support the accuracy of the Master Address File; and (3) evaluate the preparation of the Local Update of Census Address (LUCA) program for the 2020 decennial census. This report focuses on risks identified for objectives 2 and 3 to provide timely recommendations for the bureau’s operational design decisions. We reported on the results of objective 1 subsequent to the completion of additional fieldwork.