SMETHPORT — The United States Census Bureau has recognized the McKean County commissioners as a valuable member of the 2020 Census community Partnership Engagement Program.

According to the certificate signed by Dr. Steven Dillingham, director of the Census Bureau, and presented to the commissioners, “We appreciate the efforts you made in making the Partnership Program a success and helping achieve a successful 2020 Census.”

McKean County Planning Director Jeremy Morey served as chairman of the county’s Complete Count Committee, an outreach and marketing committee charged with spreading awareness of the nation’s 24th census.

Morey said the16 active members came from across the county, representing many different fields, such as local government, libraries, healthcare, human services and education. “We are very appreciative of the time these people took out of their busy schedules to assist the county residents respond to the 2020 Census and increasing our response rate from the 2010 Census,” Morey said. “It was great to see everyone come together in a very difficult year. COVID really hampered many of our outreach goals that we had set when the committee was formed, but it is clear that the people of McKean County came through nevertheless.”

This committee did not get involved with the actual census counting, Morey told The Era. “Instead, we established 69 different partnerships, 245 commitment events, 26 recruiter events and 11 Mobile Questionnaire Assistance events, resulting in McKean County achieving the second best rate in the North Central Pennsylvania region that also includes, Cameron, Clearfield, Elk, Jefferson and Potter counties.”

Additionally, the county’s 2020 self-response rate of 64.5 percent topped the 2010 rate of 63.8 percent.

In a report to the county commissioners, Morey said, “The committee’s efforts, such as the use of volunteers, high telephone response rates and advertising messages on behalf of the county helped earn the commissioners’ certificate. In fact, McKean County had one of the highest telephone response rates in the state.

“The Census Bureau,” Morey noted, “is also rolling out their Statistics in Schools program that allows K-12 teachers to become ambassadors and use Census statistics in their classrooms, showing students the importance of the Census and what the data can tell you and how it helps communities make decisions.”

In a Census Bureau release about Statistics in School, it states this program “brings school subjects to life using real-world Census Bureau statistics to create materials for use year after year…” Resources and activities can be used in social studies, math, English, geography, sociology and more.

Personnel specializing in geographic information systems at the McKean County Planning Office created and maintained the county’s innovative 2020 Census Self-Response Dashboard Response that gained national attention.

The term “dashboard” comes from an automobile dashboard, which contains the instument panel cluster. In layman’s terms, a computerized dashboard is another name for an at-a-glance, easy-to-read progress report that is often found on web pages that allows the report to be continually updated. An adequate synonym of dashboard would be “infographic.”

Developed by Sean McLaughlin, the county’s GIS coordinator, and Gabrielle Neubert of St. Marys, a summer intern, the dashboard is an ArcGIS Online Dashboard that used data provided from the 2020 Census Self-Response application.

“After manually entering the data, we would make calculations based off the available data to predict the number of residents who had completed the census, the amount of federal allocations the county and municipalities could be entitled to, and so on — for the next ten years,” said McLaughlin. “It was a lot of work, but a very useful tool and a great success.

The last time the dashboard was edited was Monday, October 5,2020.

McLaughlin told Th Era, “When the census bureau releases their results in September 2021, we will incorporate the results in order to have a definitive and authoritative understanding of the success of the McKean County Co9mplete Count Committee, 2020 Census and the amount of funding McKean County, its municipalities and census tracks are entitled.

This particular dashboard was acknowledged by employees at the census bureau’s local and regional levels for its transparency, ease of use and the multitude of data it contains.

Morey and McLaughlin both stated that this dashboard came to the attention of Heather Conrad, the North Central Pennsylvania regional Census Bureau Partnership Specialist, whose territory includes Clearfield, Jefferson, Elk, McKean, Cameron and Potter counties, who in turn, forwarded the information to her colleagues across Pennsylvania and to the staff at the Philadelphia regional office, which covers the multiple states in the Northeast.

The Philadelphia office also recognized this dashboard as a useful and worthwhile tool and shared it with other regional offices in the nation, gaining additional recognition and attention.