The Government Accountability Office has pointed out that the Census Bureau has yet to address more than 3K security issues afflicting multiple systems that the bureau will use to carry out the 2020 Census.
GAO said in a report published Thursday that among the unresolved security problems detected during the Census Bureau’s systems assessment process, 43 were deemed either “high risk†or “very high risk,†while more than 2.7K had to do with infrastructure components under development by the technical integration contractor.
The government audit agency noted that majority of the bureau’s systems will use personally identifiable information, and that such information will be collected from “over a hundred million households across the country,†underscoring the importance of ensuring security.
With a handful of systems still in the development phase, the watchdog emphasized the need for the bureau to provide enough time to conduct the requisite security assessment and “ensure that risks are at an acceptable level before the systems are deployed.â€
