The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently highlighted two key areas for Commerce Secretary Lutnick to address improvement, and census stakeholders should take note of both.
According to the July 22, 2026 report, “Fully implementing the remaining open priority recommendations” highlighted below “could significantly improve Commerce’s mission delivery and risk management”:
- “Improving planning for the decennial census. Census data are used to apportion the seats of the House of Representatives, support many private sector business decisions, and allocate hundreds of billions of dollars each year in federal financial assistance. Census planning is an enormous and complex undertaking. The Census Bureau (Bureau) implemented a series of innovations to rein in cost increases and enhance data quality of recent decennial censuses. However, the Bureau has not fully assessed the effectiveness of various activities to count hard-to enumerate populations or leveraged this information to improve census cost and accuracy, as we recommended. Taking these actions will better position the Bureau to plan for the 2030 Census and effectively count hard-to-enumerate groups.”
- “Protecting personally identifiable information. Federal agencies, including Commerce, collect and process large amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) for various government programs. Accordingly, they must ensure that any PII they collect, store, or process is protected from unauthorized access, tampering, or loss. However, Commerce has not yet incorporated privacy into its organization-wide risk management strategy, including determining its privacy risk tolerance, as we recommended. Doing so will enable Commerce to better mitigate privacy risks and help ensure PII is protected.”
— Priority Open Recommendations: Department of Commerce GAO-26-108990 Published: Jul 22, 2026. Publicly Released: Jul 29, 2026. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108990
GAO Recommendations on 2030 Census Planning
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently highlighted two key areas for Commerce Secretary Lutnick to address improvement, and census stakeholders should take note of both.
According to the July 22, 2026 report, “Fully implementing the remaining open priority recommendations” highlighted below “could significantly improve Commerce’s mission delivery and risk management”:
- “Improving planning for the decennial census. Census data are used to apportion the seats of the House of Representatives, support many private sector business decisions, and allocate hundreds of billions of dollars each year in federal financial assistance. Census planning is an enormous and complex undertaking. The Census Bureau (Bureau) implemented a series of innovations to rein in cost increases and enhance data quality of recent decennial censuses. However, the Bureau has not fully assessed the effectiveness of various activities to count hard-to enumerate populations or leveraged this information to improve census cost and accuracy, as we recommended. Taking these actions will better position the Bureau to plan for the 2030 Census and effectively count hard-to-enumerate groups.”
- “Protecting personally identifiable information. Federal agencies, including Commerce, collect and process large amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) for various government programs. Accordingly, they must ensure that any PII they collect, store, or process is protected from unauthorized access, tampering, or loss. However, Commerce has not yet incorporated privacy into its organization-wide risk management strategy, including determining its privacy risk tolerance, as we recommended. Doing so will enable Commerce to better mitigate privacy risks and help ensure PII is protected.”
— Priority Open Recommendations: Department of Commerce GAO-26-108990 Published: Jul 22, 2026. Publicly Released: Jul 29, 2026. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108990
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