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 terms of census blocks, and were able to obtain statistical information from the Census Bureau’s data tabulations (see, “Voting Districts”).

The jurisdiction of the CSACs is limited in most cases to the most highly populated areas; elsewhere, chiefly in nonmetropolitan areas, the Census Bureau relies on State agencies to help create, maintain, and update its framework of subcounty units. Their assistance has been particularly helpful in achieving consistent standards for BNAs, BGs, CDPs, and in States where they exist, CCDs (see, “County Subdivisions,” and , “Census Blocks and Block Groups”).

Some geographic entities are designed to identify geographic areas of special interest to indigenous populations, the American Indians and Alaska Natives. To establish these entities, the Census Bureau works with local tribal officials and native groups, as well as the appropriate Federal and State agencies (see, “American Indian and Alaska Native Areas”). A similar approach is used for Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas, where the geographic entities often differ from their stateside counterparts (see, “Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas”).

An important service of the CSACs, State agencies, and tribal officials is to aid in the Census Bureau’s efforts to publicize the significance of the decennial census and the other censuses and surveys, and to explain the statistical data and geographic entities available to data users. Another common function for many of these groups relates to making available to the Census Bureau the expert knowledge of their members on the sometimes complex relationship between the boundaries of legally established local entities and the Census Bureau’s statistical entities.

The Census Bureau encourages the existence and active participation of a local CSAC wherever local data users are willing to organize a committee to work on the delineation of small-area geographic entities for use in various Census Bureau programs. Members of a CSAC, representing a 3-6Sources of Local Assistance