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The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the establishment of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations and has named John Bouman as a member of the committee.

The National Advisory Committee will advise the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, will advise the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race and ethnicity, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other populations.

“We expect that the expertise of this committee will help us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee will help ensure that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of hard-to-count populations.

John Bouman, president and advocacy director of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago, is widely recognized as one of the most effective and thoughtful public-benefit advocates in the country. He is working on state-based implementation of federal health care reform, serves on the steering committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network and leads the Responsible Budget Coalition in Illinois, an effort bringing together more than 200 diverse organizations to advocate for state revenue and budget reform in Illinois. Before joining the Shriver National Center in 1996, he worked for two decades at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, where he supervised public benefits advocacy. A 1975 graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law, Bouman serves on the boards of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Donors’ Forum of Chicago, and the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C.