As I scanned the blog of Mapz: A GIS Librarian after posting the Firefox Mapping Extensions post, I saw this post on the upcoming 2010 US Census. As we are starting to see the data rollout from Canada’s 2006 Census, it is interesting to see how the US is approaching their upcoming Census.
Mapz points out that the 2010 US Census will only collect data on 6 subjects, with no long form questions on topics such as income, education, citizenship and housing characteristics. Instead, these will be covered by the American Community Survey (ACS), an annual survey of about 3 million households in the US. While the data from the ACS comes out on an annual basis (which is good), currently it only offers data down to the county and city level (not so good). Mapz concludes that this will impact GIS at his work as a GIS librarian by possibly stifling the use of GIS, just as GIS activity is blossoming, and increasing reliance on unofficial and less accurate estimates.
wow! Slightly less than 1% of the population are covered by that survey! There goes any kind of longitudinal analysis. Any idea why they are doing this? The story getting too sordid for em?