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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.
...what accounts for the differences in the estimate and the cost? What cost(s) were underestimated?
The bloat is occurring because the project is not open-source, it could be done for pennies, but would take 20 years to complete.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
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.
How could we possibly do a census with paper and pencil? I mean, we've never done it that way before, right?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
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.
1.4 billion is one hell of an overrun...and after all that, the equipment may still not work properly?
Is the Harris Corporation currently hiring? I'd like to get me some of that boondoggle.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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?
Lets hope not. The population of the West Coast and the North East combined would come out at zero!
Squirrel!
I think they should just use the post office to conduct the census. They already go to everyone's house. They could just hire some more people for the census and expand the job of the mailperson for a few months.
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
Paint me blue and call me stupid, but really, how hard is it to make a hand-held computer designed to take and store census data? It's not like these machines need to calculate pi. It's data entry and retention. Right? How could that possibly require $2 billion dollars to implement? What am I missing? (beyond the obvious corruption and inflation of budgets to line the pockets of fat cats)
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?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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?
I'm pretty sure MacGyver did his own 1985 census with a paperclip, a piece of scotch tape, and 3 guys he found standing outside a Home Depot in Tucson.
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.
Coincidentally, my first paying job was working as a US Census enumerator for the 1980 census. Paper worked fine. The real problems were with my fellow citizens who didn't want to be enumerated (which I can understand, though calling the police on me seemed like overkill).
Finally, apropos of this topic, I recently discovered that the best "organizer" in the world is an empty file folder (or perhaps several) and a supply of sticky notes. Portable, easy to reorganize, no problem if you run your car over it, easy to back up, etc.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Our last census had the option of filling out the census forms online. I didn't find out how many actually did it, but they were originally estimating 20% usage. Instead of getting the full booklet to fill out, you got an access code.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/04/27/online-census060427.html
While searching for a reference article, i found that there were some issues with Linux users, although they attempted to correct it.
http://www.linux.com/articles/54366
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
So how does yet another Republican boondoggle contract for an essential government service mean that "computers" will thwart the 2010 Census? Are these incompetent Republicans really just a computer simulation?
Maybe this really is all just some kind of Y2K bug VR nightmare. Would someone please reboot Gore, so I can go back to watching _the Simpsons_ when it was still funny?
--
make install -not war
This is not new and pioneering technology. There are companies that take similar surveys for market research purposes. Have you ever been asked to take a survey at a mall? Have you ever been at a bar when a beautiful woman with a tablet computer asks you to take a survey about cigarettes? I have. The Government is wasting billions of dollars to develop technology that has existed for years.
Why doesn't the government just outsource the whole census to a market research company and be done with it?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Maybe now, but in 2000 it was the Democrats that supported statistical sampling in the census.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE4D9123BF930A1575AC0A961958260
-Darkshadow (There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.)
Read the original version of the Constitution. There are provisions for fractional people.
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.
They could have purchased hundreds or thousands of off-the-shelf PDAs and had a company develop a basic piece of census-tracking software for a mere fraction of what this project costs. Instead they'll argue they need some elaborate, over-priced piece of hardware under the pretense that only something so fancy can reliably handle the government's needs. The best part is that the devices might not even work properly. What in the hell are these companies doing that even with this much money thrown at them they can't do anything right?
Still, that doesn't excuse the government's stupidity. It's like that stimulus package. As if enough money hasn't already been dumped into that some halfwit decided they needed to send out letters informing recipients that they were going to be receiving these checks. In many cases these notices will be arriving barely a month before the check arrives. Sending these letters out has cost the government over $40 million.
It's time the government's budget were capped at the rate of inflation making allowances only for population growth. It's time they learned how to manage their expenses like the rest of us have to.
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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