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Your Response is Required by Law

2016 Business R&D and Innovation Survey

This weekend I opened my mail and found something that quickly struck my curiosity because it was from the US Government. As I opened the official envelope I discovered that it was the 2016 Business R&D and Innovation Survey, sent out by the US Census Bureau. At first I was going to just dismiss the whole issue, because it was the weekend and I really didn’t want to be bothered by yet another survey, then I saw it in big, bold letters: Your Response Is Required by Law

Your Response is Required by Law
Your Response is Required by Law

Ugh, my Federal Government demanded that I fill out the survey, or else. Hmm, not exactly a friendly way to get business owners to fill out a survey. Oh well, I didn’t want to have a Federal Employee knocking on my door, so I went ahead and filled out the information online. Of course, the printed explanation was a little sketchy in directing me to the online process, so I soon learned that I had to:

  • Visit https://portal.census.gov
  • Create a new account
  • Wait for an email confirmation
  • Click the special link in the email confirmation
  • Login at the Portal
  • Provide my Authentication Code

Once I finished all of the preliminaries, I answered lots of questions about my business, innovation, and R&D habits.

Census Questions
Census Questions

In total I spent maybe 20 minutes on this census exercise. Thank God that I won’t be breaking the law, and who knows, maybe our Federal Government has some need to know about what Tualatin Web is doing, besides paying my taxes and helping clients with their web sites. If you get the same mandatory survey, don’t fret, it will soon be over, and yes, you will lose some of your business work day to comply with the US Census Bureau.

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