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."

Comments

Any history buffs out there?

[pegr]

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.

Foreign census experience

[Bombula]

I was living in a Gulf country a few years ago when the government there conducted the census. They just sent out an army of 20-somthings with PDAs to do the surveys. I believe most of the survey was multiple-choice, but there were some numeric entries (how much I earned per month and what y rent cost, for example). You could do those with multiple-choice too, obviously, with a selection of ranges.

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.

Major IT failures seem so common

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Are you serious?

[moosesocks]

The more pressing question on my mind is why they haven't been sued into oblivion. How can you seriously get away with that?

Re:Are you serious?

[Hatta]

Corruption.

Re:Anyone have any idea...

[shadow349]

So the bids are only estimates.

I've done work on construction estimates that were of similar (~$250M) size that were submitted as "GMP" - Guaranteed Max Price. Yeah, Change Orders will pad that somewhat, and there is some contingency, but together they won't be more than 15%.

Of course this makes the bidding a farce as everyone tries to put in the lowest estimate

Which is why I've always felt that the process should pick the second lowest bid. It's trivial to shoot for the bottom ... it's impossible to shoot for second from the bottom.

Re:Anyone have any idea...

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

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.