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Computers May Thwart 2010 Census
smooth wombat writes "With the Constitutionally mandated census of 2010 just around the corner, it appears the Commerce Department's attempt to use handheld computers to gather census information may not come to fruition. Originally, the contract was awarded at a cost of $596 million to Harris Corporation. However, the GAO has now estimated the revised contract, now costing $647 million, could grow to $2 billion and the equipment may still not work properly. There is consideration that the paper and pencil method might have to be employed to complete the census."
Recall that Herman Hollerith came up with punched cards for the 1890 census. He founded the company that became IBM. Here's some linky goodness.
of course do a more businesslike version with a larger keyboard... but the XO with custom census gathering application saving the data off onto flash drives would have been perfect... pity the timescale is a bit short now...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Between driver's licenses, utilities, medicare, social security, public school enrollment, arrests, and other records, a good statistician should be able to get an answer that is close enough. To double check the results, canvass a few dozen randomly chosen counties, then adjust accordingly.
But there is no reason that counting people should cost over half a billion dollars.
We should be able to contract this out. Offer maybe a mere 50 million dollars to the entrant that can produce the best results. Anyone can enter. They do their counting by whatever legal method they choose. THEN the census dept does their random counties, and whoever is closest on those counties gets paid, and their results for the whole country are used.
BTW, I'm assuming here that a census should be just counting heads; that all of the other questions that the census people ask, such as level of education, are none of their business. The constitution requires that people be counted. The goal was to ensure proportional representation. It does not require all of the intrusive questions that they ask now.
Is there a law that requires census workers to knock on people's doors, can we not allow people to register for a census on the internet? Would that not be easier and less expensive?
The problem is as it always is with the federal government. The Constitution only says one thing about the census:
"[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
from Article 1 Section 2, but our government has increased what is actually collected from a simple head count to a great deal more (intrusive) information as defined by 13 USC 141.
If the census only covered what is mentioned in the Constitution, one of those simple hand counters (the click type) would suffice.
During the last census, one of the census workers came to my house with this big long form. I told him that there were 2 voting age adults and 3 underage children residing there. He started asking all sorts of other questions, how much do you make, what race is everyone, etc. When I refused to answer he became all indignant telling me I was required to answer because it was a Constitutional mandate. When I pointed out that I did answer based on the Constitution he became angry.
At that point I told him to have me arrested and I'd see him in court and closed the door.
The fact is, the government needs all that data to continue with their social engineering and that is something I won't support.
So yeah, the system has cost overruns, and could be handled with just a piece of paper and a pencil, if, the government would do only what they were supposed to do.
The whole census survey took about 15 minutes. They collected a lot of data - I'd say there were between 60 and 80 questions. Since I'm a geeky sort of person, I asked the kid how it worked and he showed me - the PDA (a Compac Pocket PC) just ran a macro in MS Office which dumped each survey as a file into a folder. That folder synced via wireless/mobile-phone link to where the main data center was.
The country has a population of about 4 million, and he said there were 200 people doing the survey for several months. Seemed pretty straightforward, and I can't imagine it cost that much - certainly labor and not the PDAs was the primary expense.
A-Bomb
Bet if you did a study, a serious one, you'd find there's an irrefutable inverse relationship between the amount of money bid for a project and the success of that project. I know it sounds like a flippant witticism, but I'm sure of it, do the research and the figures will prove a direct *causal link* between the amount of money put in and project failure.
I mean, what is it with these large scale IT projects? They take a simple problem and turn it into a money pit. Here in the UK we've had several high profile massive budget IT failures in the last 10 years, air traffic control, national health patient record databases, in fact the more critical it is the more of a spectacular unqualified fuck-up it becomes.
Now, if you got a couple of average hacker nerds and gave then the same specs, but didn't tell them it was for a large scale project, or for whom, they would give you a faultless solution using commodity hardware, stock methods and free software in a few months at one *millionth* the cost we're looking at here. Every one of you here knows it to be true. So, my question is, what goes wrong? How can it possibly go so wrong? Are the people involved complete idiots? Or corrupt?
What are the factors that turn a simple software project into an impossible task? Is it the stress of high budgets? Too many crooks spoiling the broth? And more to the point, when is some bright person going to break from this pattern of failure and realise that to award a major government IT contract to *more than one* complete no-name outsiders bidding a fraction of the cost makes more sense than giving billions of dollars to one contractor and putting all your eggs in one basket?
Yeah, yeah, I know, the evil gummint. That said, this was farmed out to Harris Corporation. How could they screw up so dramatically? Every part of this project is pure COTS. Handheld computers are stock items, in the form of phones, PDAs, tablets, eeePCs, or whatever. In any of those categories one can get a device that'll run whatever software you want it to run for not much money at all. The input software on the handhelds should be trivial, and the backend is standard database. Big standard database; but that is nothing new. How can that start at over half a billion dollars and potentially quadruple from there? Even if you bought expensive commercial software the whole way, giant sun boxxen to run it on, and iphones for every last censustaker it shouldn't run anywhere near that. Heck, for that kind of money, you could develop an openMoko branch to be exactly the device you want it to be, probably three times over. WTF? I realise that the government has a reputation for lousy efficiency; but what about this contractor? How does a company this worthless survive?
The more pressing question on my mind is why they haven't been sued into oblivion. How can you seriously get away with that?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Corruption.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In 52 years I've been counted once, to my knowledge. It was either the 1980 or 1990 census. Never before or since.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
can we not allow people to register for a census on the internet?
;-). But, then again, it IS a federal government operation we're talking about, and poorly specified requirements, unbounded scope-creep and mismanagement know no bounds.
Sure you can. I submitted my census questions via secure website during the last census in 2006...but that was in Canada. It was easier, and certainly less expensive to process (didn't save paper though, because everyone still got the mailer; you could fill it in and mail it back or log in with the information provided in the mailer).
I'm not sure about how it goes in the US, but sending out canvassers only covers about two percent of data collection. Canvassing is only used for the following:
* to survey transient populations--ie. the homeless--
* to collect from remote locations such as the far north, where mail service and internet connectivity are slow, limited or unavailable
* to get data from households who didnt reply via internet or the mailer (and to charge you if you refuse to respond to the mandatory questions on the census)
I can't imagine, even given the 1000 percent larger population, that implementing electronic data collection for canvassers to get that two percent of data would require billions of dollars to implement (the US dollar hasn't depreciated THAT much
Yay for non-technical decision makers making technical decisions!
My favorite procurement/supply story is from a guy I worked with in the Navy; we needed a switch for some system that required replacement parts to be some super-special reliability grade, so he got the part number and called up the company from home. "Hi this is Billy Joe Ray Bob's electronics supply in Podunk, Lousiana; I need a BR-549 limit switch, how much are they?" The answer was something like $12.
He calls back a week later as Petty Officer so-and-so from the USS Neveryoumind, and then the BR-549 limit switch costs $349. Apparently the super-special reliability grade sticker they put on it after they take it out of the bin costs $337.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Census data was used to round up japanese-american citizens for interment camps during WWII:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-30-census-role_N.htm
With the current "war on the unexpected" who knows how current census data will be used to abuse citizens like yourself.
Facing corruption is not was politicians do. Census is not just counting heads it is also collection of a log of other (non constitutionally mandated information) the government had made this a constantly complex task. On the other hand the work is farmed out to workers low on the political food chain. And supervised by nearly the same type of people.
In Pennsylvania you need to consider the census field workers and their equipment but, mainly you need to consider their poor supervision. For the 1990 census I had three (count em three) census mappers (geo people) to my house one of the oldest in the neighborhood each one was "lost" in my opinion. Those you live in the linear grid urban street areas are lost in the suburban areas. But most of all these people looked like urban political types lost in suburbia. One of the "suprises" of the 1990 census was there were more people in Philadelphia than what was predicted. My conclusion they are just better at counting people in their own neighborhoods and don't care about cheating the rest of the state our of their fair share.
Given an ever expanding scope of the census survey, a government not really in the computer age, and under supervised workers I don't think the census will add up.
Schools also buy complete tables, chairs, etc, but that doesn't stop them from specifying X years more warranty on them than already comes from the factory. When ordering radios you say "we want them to last X amount" i.e. better transistors and the manufacturer says "sure, we can do that (for X + 45% markup)" and then charge the government for any additional holdups involved in building and testing a non-standard product.
moox. for a new generation.
Then, I decided that "Censorship ftw!" was a good subject line.
Finally, I chose to put forth my own ideas, and rant about the modding as an aside.
Feel free to skip over my rant by jumping down past "Rant Off" (marked in bold) to "My own take on the subject" (also in bold), but please do consider actually reading it, as I feel it adds to the discussion (Of course I feel that way because they're my own opinions. Your level of agreement may vary). Of course, I fully expect to be joining the above-mentioned posts in "modded to negative" land. (Who needs karma?)
Rant On:
Apparently, we here at Slashdot think censorship is ok.
Apparently, "-1, Flamebait" is a good substitute for "I disagree, and am too lazy to reply."
I wish I hadn't spent my mod points yesterday. If nothing else, I would have counteracted the "-1, Flamebait" with a "+1, Insightful", or a "+1, Funny" at the least. I'm not saying these posts need a +5, but a +2 would have been about right. I'm also not saying these score any technical points for grammar or punctuation, and they're a bit crude for my taste, but the sentiment and opinions being expressed are just and proper, and any citizen of the United States should feel a similar level of outrage at this blatant abuse (the stuff mentioned in the article, not the treatment these posts have received).
I am repeating the posts I feel were modded unfairly, because without their context, my own post makes much less sense... and anyone browsing at a level higher than "-1" won't see the posts I am replying to with this one. My own "translation" of the intent of the posts (which may be wrong, of course, but I feel they're fairly accurate) follows each quoted post, in italics.
Flagrant Corruption (Score:-1)
by the0ther (720331) on Wednesday March 26, @03:52PM (#22873934) Homepage
two billion dollars? are you effing kidding me? let's go back to the good old days when they would hang a man for stealing a horse.
This is a reference to the blatant and obvious theft, mismanagement, and/or fraud involved in this situation.
I agree (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Lilith's Heart-shape (1224784) on Wednesday March 26, @03:59PM (#22874042)
You're right, and the people modding you down are full of shit. Two billion dollars for a census is unforgivable, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of Bush's cronies had stock in Harris. You're right; we should go back to the days when horse thieves were hanged, the days when the tax regime we have now would provoke widespread insurrection.
--
Arioch! Arioch! Hookers and blow for my lord Arioch!
This is an agreement with the first post, and a disagreement with those who modded the first post down. There is also an insinuation of corruption in our government (surprise), and a statement that patriotism should be spurring on those of us who feel likewise to *do something* (Boston Tea Party, anyone?)
I would like to point out that, while crude, both of these posts have valid points. I, too, agree that this ("this" being the topic of the article... remember? that blurb at the top of the page?) is an obvious sign of corruption, and just one more thing to add to the list of items to redress when we begin standing those people responsible for the mess our country is in against the wall.
To those of you who didn't catch the gist of this thread:
The GP was shocked and offended that someone is getting away with this obvious fraud and mismanagement, and no one is being held accountable for this gross oversight (or lack thereof). The comment about horse thieves may have been an attempt at tossing a little humor into the mix, to take the sting out a bit.
This post's parent made the (apparently unforgiveable) mistake of agreeing with that sentiment, and got modded (Can you see the incredulous look on my face? Unbelievable!) Flamebait for it.
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