A watchdog agency again has classified the 2020 census as high risk because of efforts last fall by the Trump administration to shorten the door-knocking and data-processing phases of the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. The U.S. Government Accountability Office says in its annual High-Risk Report that the compressed time frame for data collection increased the risk of compromised data quality. The GAO has classified the 2020 census as a high-risk area since 2017. The agency says in Tuesday’s report that delays, compressed timeframes and continued uncertainty over the impact of COVID-19 has the potential to compromise the quality of the count.
