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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.
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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
You are not required to answer any other question on the census, either.
You can really just say "nine people live here, go away" and they will.
All that information IS necessary for the government to provide all the services they provide today in a reasonable and efficient manner.
Unfortunately, it would also require that those in charge be interested in reason or efficiency. All they want to do is separate you from money.
So, I agree, but only in that the government should get their nose out of places it doesn't belong in a more general sense. Unfortunately, we could probably argue about what those things are all day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lets hope not. The population of the West Coast and the North East combined would come out at zero!
Squirrel!
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?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
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
....the lowest income quintile keeps getting poorer. If the Federal government is going to do anything to help these people along, it needs to know a little more about them. Why are we implicitly assuming that the feds should do anything in particular to help these people? The last thing they need is more government 'help'. The 'war on poverty' has been going on for 40+ years now, and - as noted - the poorest group is getting poorer, not wealthier. If you think Congress makes dumb decisions, then complain about the dumb decisions. But don't cut off their access to information that could help them make better decisions. Parent - and congress - seem to assume that if you just knew enough about people, you could make good decisions for them. The latest atack on poverty didn't work? Well we just need more data.But the fact is that you can never know enough about a person's needs and circumstances as the person himself. Leave him alone, quit meddling in his life, lower his taxes ( by not wasting his money on cencus boondogles ) and he will probably get rich on his own.
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".
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.