Ditas Katague is the director of California Complete Count Census 2020 (CCCC), an advisory committee to the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. She has over 20 years’ experience working with legislatures for the public and private sector in a wide variety of roles. Katague is a specialist in the national census and has consulted with the California and federal governments on the last three censuses. ¹

Education

In 1987, Katague attained a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1993, she earned an MA in intergovernmental management, with a specialization in organization development, from the University of Southern California. ²

Career

After earning her master’s degree, Katague worked for two years as a federal interagency coordinator at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 1995, she first entered the private sector to work for Deloitte, the tax and accounting services company. ³ In 1998, Katague joined the Sacramento advisory board of the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC, and continues to hold the position today. ⁴

Katague left in 1999 to serve as chief deputy director of the California Complete Count Campaign for the 2000 census. There she designed a multi-lingual, multi-media outreach program which helped California’s census mail-in rate become the highest in the nation. ⁵

Katague stayed in the California state government until 2004 to work for the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. ⁶

In 2005, Katague returned to the private sector to work as a vice president and liaison for Countrywide Insurance to state and local governments. She simultaneously served in a similar role for Bank of America. ⁷

In 2008, Katague became the director of the 2010 census for California’s Office of Planning and Research under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). After the census, she became chief deputy commissioner of the California Department of Corporations for a year. In 2011 she became chief of staff to California Public Utilities Commissioner Cathy Sandoval, appointed by Governor Jerry Brown (D). Katague stayed in the position throughout Sandoval’s six-year term. ⁸

In 2012, Katague became a member and then chair of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations Membership List, a committee which advises the US Census Bureau on a wide variety of issues, including how to reach minority demographic groups. Katague’s specialty on the committee was informing the federal government on how to coordinate with state and local governments to increase census penetration. She left the organization in 2018. ⁹

After briefly working as a lecturer at USC, Katague became the census coordinator for the California Department of Finance in 2017 but left the following year. ¹⁰

Also in 2017, Katague assumed her current role as the director of California Complete Count Census 2020. ¹¹

Census

Katague’s role in the CCCC is to advise the California government on how to increase census penetration, and especially on how to access 11 million¹² “hardest-to-count” individuals. ¹³ Katague noted in a teleconference that the census determines each state’s number of Congressional seats and electoral allotment, as well as federal funding from over 300 programs which disburse $800 billion¹⁴ to $1.5 trillion annually. Katague estimated that for every individual who isn’t counted on the 2020 census, the California economy will miss out on $10,000 in federal funding over ten years (until the 2030 census). The California government has allocated $187 million to this year’s census outreach efforts. ¹⁵

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13. “Ditas Katague.” CA.gov. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://census.ca.gov/staff/director-bio/.
14. “Funder Census Initiative 2020.” FCCP. Accessed April 26, 2020. https://funderscommittee.org/working-group/4/.
15. Hedin, Mark. “California lags behind national average on census.” Inquirer.net. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://usa.inquirer.net/53814/california-lags-behind-national-average-on-census.