The 2020 census may be ending Sept. 30, a month earlier than previously announced. Although U.S. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham maintains that the agency “intends to meet a similar level of household responses as collected in prior censuses,” four former bureau directors warn that the move “will result in seriously incomplete enumerations in many areas across our country.”

Are you a census employee? Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative newsroom, wants to hear from you. What are you seeing and experiencing on the job that you think the public ought to know about?

Census workers recently told us that their government-provided iPhones don’t have enough battery life to last an eight-hour shift, described the phones’ tailor-made app as inefficient and buggy, and have reported training new recruits on how to use the iPhone and iPad apps, only to be told that no devices were available to distribute and that none would be ready for weeks.

If you’d like to share your story, fill out the questionnaire below. The responses will inform our own reporting and be shared with local newsrooms and journalists around the country to help reporters cover the 2020 census in their communities. This is part of Reveal’s Seeing 2020 collaboration.

Questions? You can reach the team at Seeing2020@revealnews.org


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David Rodriguez was a community engagement producer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, Rodriguez's work as an engagement assistant producer at Southern California Public Radio helped develop a report on how newsrooms can improve their reporting on the 2020 Census, which won the 2019 Gather Award in Engaged Journalism. 

Rodriguez has reported stories on immigration at the Investigative Reporting Workshop in American University. He is an alum of NPR's Next Generation Radio and San Francisco State University. He previously completed internships with KPCC's podcast team, where he helped produce The Big One: Your Survival Guide, and with Reveal, where he created a database tracking how much money and time the United States government has spent buying land along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Byard Duncan was a reporter and producer for  engagement and collaborations for Reveal. He managed Reveal’s Reporting Networks, which provide more than 1,000 local journalists across the U.S. with resources and training to continue Reveal investigations in their communities. He also helped lead audience engagement initiatives around Reveal’s stories and assists local reporters in elevating their work to a national platform. In addition to Reveal, Duncan’s work has appeared in GQ, Esquire, The California Sunday Magazine and Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets. He was part of Reveal’s Behind the Smiles project team, which was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019. He is the recipient of two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a National Headliner Award, an Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award, and two first-place awards for feature storytelling from the Society of Professional Journalists and Best of the West. Duncan is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.