Local Census offices will begin mailing out thousands of census forms to local households today.

Census officials hope to improve on the 60 percent mailback rate — third-worst in the country — that Hawai'i recorded in 2000. The national average was 72 percent.

Census workers have already been hard at work leaving questionnaires at homes that do not have mailboxes and coordinating counts with prisons, hospitals, shelters and other collective housing institutions.

Officials have set April 15 as the mailback deadline, after which time Census takers will be deployed to nonrespondent homes to help people fill out the forms.

The U.S. Census Bureau will post updates on mailback rates for each census track on its Take 10 Map, www.2010.census.gov/2010census/take10map.