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responsibilities. NIST plays the role of a neutral expert third party to facilitate the development of voluntary standards, but does not set standards for the private sector.

Highlights of NIST's security activities include the following:

Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) In an open, participatory, public process, NIST developed the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), to replace the aging Data Encryption Standard (DES).

Critical Infrastructure Protection Grants Program NIST is administering the Critical Infrastructure Protection Grants Program (CIPGP), a program to fund private sector research and development of new security solutions that are needed by both government and the private sector to protect the nation's critical infrastructures.

Computer Security Expert Assist Team (CSEAT) NIST is assisting Federal agencies in identifying vulnerabilities, to help agencies prioritize and develop strategies for addressing these vulnerabilities and to plan for new systems. The expert teams will examine the organizational structure responsible for computer security, policies, methodologies, and the procedures used to identify vulnerabilities and attacks and will provide recommendations for improvement

The National Telecommunication & Information Administration (NTIA) is the Federal government's CIP Lead Agency for the Information and Communications sector. Although NTIA's lead agency mission has not received separate appropriations, it has carried out the following activities with the assistance of other Agencies and Commerce bureaus:

I.

II.

Creation of the Communications & Information Sector Working Group
(CISWG) to facilitate interaction with industry in the I&C sector, NTIA
increased the scope of the existing CIP Education & Awareness Committee
to include Internet companies and companies dealing with wireless
technologies.

Entered into a joint venture of NTIA and Department of Defense to perform a comprehensive vulnerability assessment of critical infrastructures in the Rocky Mountain Corridor, which comprise facilities located in Colorado and Wyoming. Under the joint venture, NTIA's role is to coordinate the vulnerability assessments with companies that have critical communications and information nodes in the region. Following the Rocky Mountain Corridor project, Hawaii will be the next region to test the DoD model, with NTIA facilitating the effort with one of the principle telecommunication carriers in the region.

III.

IV.

V.

During FY 2000, NTIA worked with industry to identify an approach to establishing best CIP practices and guidelines for small and medium-size businesses.

NTIA developed a "best practices” vulnerability assessment methodology and developed a plan for working with industry to disseminate the model for self-assessment.

Via the CISWG, NTIA has participated in national cross-sectoral outreach with the I&C sector, supporting and participating in meetings on CIP issues and to increase awareness of CIP issues.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) CIP activities include protection of the nation's weather and environmental forecasting systems and warning and forecasting of natural threats to critical infrastructure.

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Vulnerability assessments and IT systems' security plans for critical systems such as satellite operations, weather forecasting, flood prediction and warning, and marine navigation.

The Space Weather Center that provides forecasts, alerts, and warnings of solar flares and geomagnetic storms that can adversely affect

telecommunications, satellite operations, navigation systems, and remote intelligence gathering.

Backup systems for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites that provide high-resolution, real-time observations needed to understand and predict changes in the environment and climate.

Information Infrastructure Grants

QUESTION: Please provide a chart for the record showing both the budget request and actual appropriation provided for the Information Infrastructure Grant program (otherwise known as the Technology Opportunities Program) for each fiscal year since its inception.

ANSWER:

Below is a chart that identifies the President's budget request and the actual appropriation for the Information Infrastructure Grants program since its inception.

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APPROPRIATION

(dollars in millions)

$26 $45* $21.5 $21.5 $20

$18 $15.5

$45.4**

Congress rescinded $19 million from the original appropriation of $64 million in FY 1995. ** Congress rescinded $100 thousand from the original appropriation of $45.5 million in FY 2001

E-Commerce Initiative

QUESTION: In the 2001 budget, the President submitted a substantial request for measuring new economic activity in the electronic government. This was known as the e-commerce initiative. Congress, in a last minute compromise, funded a portion of that initiative. What new funds are requested in the economic censuses program for measuring e-government, and what funds are requested for continuous monitoring of these activities?

ANSWER:

While the President's 2001 budget did propose an initiative for measuring e-commerce the initiative focused on e-business and not on e-government activities. Specifically, an e-commerce question has been added to almost 600 economic census report forms providing for the first time e-commerce estimates for states and a series of check boxes have been added to manufacturing, wholesale, transportation, and retail trade forms to document how e-business processes are shifting functional activities among manufacturers, distributors, transporters, and retailers.

Nonetheless, Census is engaged in providing e-government services. For example, in FY2002, for the first time, the Census Bureau will offer electronic reporting to over 3.5 million businesses included in the 2002 Economic Census. They will also develop electronic reporting software, and modify census data capture and processing systems to handle the new information.

In addition to these activities in the Economic Census program, the FY 2001 President's budget requested $8.5 million for Measuring Electronic Business in the Current Economic Statistics subactivity. Measuring electronic government was not part of this proposed initiative, either. The Congress appropriated $2.0 million for the initiative that were used to provide:

Annual measures of e-commerce (on-line sales) activity for manufacturing, selected wholesale and service industries, and retail trade;

release quarterly estimates of retail e-commerce sales;

document manufacturing plants' use of electronic business processes such as online purchases, selling, payments, production management, logistics, customer support, and communication and support services (e-mail, training, benefits management);

and initiate a modest e-business research program.

The first multi-sector e-commerce estimates were released March 7, 2001 and the first manufacturing e-business process use data is scheduled for release in early June 2001. Additional data and information are available at www.census.gov/estats.

The FY 2002 budget does not request additional funds for continuous monitoring of e-business activities. The base funding of $2 million in FY 2002 will cover an entire year as opposed to measuring only a portion of the year as the $2 million funded in FY 2001. As a result, the funding will mainly be used to continue quarterly estimates of retail e-commerce and produce the annual multi-sector e-commerce report.

Group Quarters Count

QUESTION: There appear to be serious problems with the accuracy of the group quarters count in the 2000 census. We have reports from Texas and California that there were problems with counts of college students. One town in Indiana/Illinois reported that a prison location was off by 20 miles. Over 50% of problems identified by state demographers were problems with group quarters in the 2000 census. What is being done to address the problems with the 2000 group quarters counts, and what is being done, through the ACS or otherwise, to prevent similar problems in 2010?

ANSWER:

While there has been some indications of minor, isolated incidents of errors in the group quarters count in Census 2000, our initial assessment of these incidents does not indicate a systematic or major problem. We successfully enumerated over 191,000 group quarters during the census. Our analysis of these enumerations found that less than 300 group quarters cases have been identified with enough detail to indicate they may be in error.

Unfortunately, sometimes small errors lead to problematic results, especially in anomalous areas. An error as small as 0.1 of 1 percent is a concern to us. To address such errors, we plan to launch the Count Question Resolution (CQR) program on June 30, 2001. The CQR program, which will be in effect until September 30, 2003, aims to allow state, local, and tribal governments the opportunity to challenge their housing unit and group quarters counts. As part of this program, official certificates with corrected numbers will be issued to all affected governments regardless if errors were identified as a result of external challenges by state demographers or other internal review. (No changes will be made to the apportionment or redistricting counts as a result of this program, and no additional data will be collected.)

One of our priority areas of research and early planning for the 2010 Census involves group quarters and other areas requiring special enumeration methods. A first step in

this process, as with other components of the census, is to conduct a thorough and comprehensive assessment of successes as well as lessons learned from Census 2000 that will form the basis for our efforts to enhance and improve results in the 2010

census.

Demographic Analysis

QUESTION: The Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce were quite surprised when the 2000 decennial census count came in above the estimate provided by Demographic Analysis. Subsequent work has shown that Demographic Analysis failed to monitor and incorporate changes in inmigration and out-migration. In fact, it appears that there was very little investment in the Demographic Analysis program across the decade. Is there an increase in funding for Demographic Analysis in the 2002 budget, or are you willing to reprogram decennial census funds to improve research and management of the Demographic Analysis program? If not, why are you not investing in this program, which appears to be in serious need of additional research?

ANSWER:

Demographic Analysis is a well developed tool for evaluating coverage of the national population that has been used extensively for every census since 1960. The demographic analysis approach is largely based on administrative records and provides a measure independent of the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (A.C.E.) methodology. Demographic analysis techniques serve as a check on the reasonableness of change between adjusted censuses and allow the examination of the consistency of change for limited population subgroups. To further examine the results from Census 2000, we have initiated a short-term project to evaluate the international migration assumptions (i.e., illegal migration, emigration, temporary migration, and legal migration) used in demographic analysis estimates.

Given the recent increased attention to the findings from the Demographic Analysis, $0.5 million has been added in FY01 to the original plan from Decennial funding to allow for the completion of an in depth analysis of the reliability of the demographic analysis and population estimates methodology and the underlying components of population change. In FY 2002, $450,000 is allocated to continue the evaluation of demographic analysis for the Decennial program. Furthermore, Demographic analysis is a continuous component of the Intercensal Estimates Program, the program from which we produce annual estimates of population. The Bureau of the Census is currently evaluating our current Intercensal Estimates Program, in particular the underlying assumptions of international migration to meet the needs necessary to improve the program.

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