Census Bureau To Scrap Handhelds — Cost $3 Billion

GovTechGuy writes "The Census Bureau will tell a House panel today that it will drop plans to use handheld computers to help count Americans for the 2010 census, increasing the cost for the decennial census by as much as $3 billion, according to testimony the Commerce Department secretary plans to give this afternoon."

Comments

Wow that is so funny

[Anonymous Coward]

this is bigger than the abacus scam of '24.

Surplus

[Jhon]

Will they sell the hand-helds? Or give them away like Cheese in the 80's?

Re:Surplus

[SQLGuru]

Look for them on Woot during the next Woot-off.

Layne

Re:Surplus

[d3ac0n]

I don't think they ever bought them. The cost difference is related to the extra time and manpower that a paper census will take vs the costs for an electronic one.

Personally I think this is a good thing. Better to spend money to do things the tried and true way than to experiment with a "hi-tech" solution that may or may not have exploitable weaknesses in it. We've all seen how faulty the electronic voting machines have been, I think it's wise that the census folks don't want to go down that road.

Kudos to the Census people, and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Neb) for supporting and encouraging their wise decision.

Re:Surplus

[Otter]

That was my first thought too (Do they run Linux?) but I don't think they exist yet. It sounds like the $3 billion is mostly projected cost savings from the handhelds that won't be attained, not that there's $3 billion in handhelds sitting in a warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.

(BTW, does everyone now have hideous Reply to This buttons on their comment display or do I need to refresh something?)

Re:Surplus

[Gat0r30y]

I don't think they ever bought them. Nah, didn't buy em, just dropped 1/2 a Billion into development it would appear.
From the Article -

In 2006, the Census Bureau awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers that enumerators would use to collect data from Americans who did not send in their census forms.

Re:Surplus

[d3ac0n]

(BTW, does everyone now have hideous Reply to This buttons on their comment display or do I need to refresh something?)

I've got them too. Big honking balloon-ish grey buttons. I don't mind buttons, but it would be nice if they used the same buttons as the "Post Comment" form "Preview" and "Submit" buttons. Those are much nicer.

Re:Surplus

[iluvcapra]

Personally I think this is a good thing. Better to spend money to do things the tried and true way than to experiment with a "hi-tech" solution that may or may not have exploitable weaknesses in it.

I'm coming to take your computer back.

Yours truly,
Shade of Herman Hollerith.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

These buttons are like little focal points for me. They draw far too much attention away from the text. I thought that was the original purpose of the text links (to stay in the background until you need them).

Re:Surplus

[MightyMartian]

Generally when you are trying out new technology, you choose a few locales to be testbeds. That way you can determine whether or not the technology will work as advertised, and if it does, it gives you a chance to correct any bugs. To go out and buy three billion dollars worth the equipment and then decide that it doesn't work suggests to me that there are some severely incompetent people at the top of the chain.

I feel the same way about voting machines. Test them out in a few places, get to know the equipment, and if you still figure it's going to work, you have a place to go. But this mass exodus from one system to another is just lunacy.

Re:Surplus

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah, they are hideous. The links didn't grab attention like these do, but they were available when someone wanted to post. Just too much contrast.

I know that /. is trying to heed the call of time and modernize itself, but this is a step in the wrong direction imo. But then again, I don't like the new javascript discussion system either. I've been using Nested mode for years and that seems the best way to look at comments and keep track who is replying to what.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

s/Neb/Ill/

Re:Surplus

[Dare nMc]

hideous Reply to This buttons on their comment display

waiting for a greasemonkey update in 5,4,3...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2175

Re:Surplus

[Archangel Michael]

What I found funny was my brain was actually translating the grey buttons into slashdot green. Now that I look closer, they are indeed grey. And now all I see is the grey; no more slashdot green.

Gee, thanks alot.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just you.
It went live @ midnight.

People first started talking about it in Microsoft Told to Pay Tax on Licence Fee
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=509334&cid=22948086

Re:Surplus

[Arainach]

Former House Speaker, you mean. Even though it might not seem like it at times, the House is in fact controlled by Democrats and thus Pelosi is the Speaker.

Re:Surplus

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I'm sure it comes as a surprise to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert that he's from Nebraska - since he's from Illinois.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to the Census people, and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Neb) for supporting and encouraging their wise decision.

On the other hand, what an amazingly short-sighted, neo-luddite decision on both the Census bureau and Rep. Dennis Hastert ($$$$-usa). They will need to go down this road some time and history facvors the early adopters.

Re:Surplus

[Reality Master 201]

s/House Speaker/former House Speaker/

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

Before applauding a former House Speaker with a terrible voting record, maybe you should consider finding out why the recommendation to keep using paper was made. From the article, it had nothing to do with a fear of technology or concerns related to voting machines. It was simply because the project to use the handhelds "experienced significant schedule, performance and cost issues". In other words, it was a matter of logistics.

Re:Surplus

[timeOday]

Personally I think this is a good thing. Better to spend money to do things the tried and true way than to experiment with a "hi-tech" solution that may or may not have exploitable weaknesses in it.

I can't imagine WalMart, or any other successful business attempting to do inventory (yes, that's what a census amounts to) purely on paper because they can't get their act together, or have money to burn. This is just as frustrating as the IRS refusal to offer an official free tax filing website. $3 billion extra dollars! All for a census that's riddled with extra transcription errors and will obviously be entered into computers in the end anyways, to be of any use at all.

Re:Surplus

[devildog820]

The article said that the cost will be $3bln now that the handhelds are being dropped.

Re:Surplus

[Mean Variance]

Why is parent Troll? It's a little bit Funny, a little Insightful.

Re:Surplus

[rcamans]

By the way, this opens up the door to the next development contract award for the 2012 handheld. So every few years they get to pat another favorite contractor on the but

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

Not precisely true - there are other things the contractor did for Census; it's not just the handhelds. (Control systems and the handheld software for another operation.)

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ this is just like the government. Instead of contracting a company that is probably owned by a buddy of a congressman. Why not use the existing handhelds on the market and contract out software to deal with the census stuff. Perhaps you could *gasp* work with the existing company and work to make them a little robust. I am sure it would have been much cheaper to buy a couple of hundred thousand N800s and contract out a software house to put a custom OS on there. (The N800 is just a left field example. I don't know if that would been suitable)

Re:Surplus

[cgenman]

AAAAnd that's when we force Harris Corp to pick up their own bill, as they massively failed to deliver on time.

Re:Surplus

[Locutus]

that's right, they said it would add $3b on to the cost to do the census but the contract was originally $595 MILLION for the handheld devices and software. Because this company and those responsible for spec'ing the requirements failed, going back to the paper method is going to add billions to the original estimated costs.

And let's not forget that to get a ~$600 MILLION proposal through, someone had to sell someone else on a huge cost saves. Now that they've failed to get this simple questionnaire system built they have to revert back to the bloated "costs savings" figures or they'll look like more of a fool than they already do.

How pathetic and what a freak'n waste.

LoB

Re:Surplus

[Bryansix]

The one problem here is that the census only comes around once every 10 years.

Re:Surplus

[dubdays]

I certainly won't hold my breath, but they ought to sell them for a few cents on the dollar and donate the money to NASA, where funds get cut constantly, and a few million dollars goes a fairly long way.

But the current administration would probably piss it away to the DoD....idiots.

Dammit! I get a decent idea going, and then I remember the fuckers who are running this joint.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

$3 billion dollars? Could we use that to just get rid of illegals and subtract 60%?

Re:Surplus

[AnomaliesAndrew]

Half a billion dollars??? 525,000 computers?

That's only roughly 6000 citizens entered into each computer. Sounds like paper's more effective.

I wrote a handheld inventory and distribution control system for my company and it handles 6000 pallets every day. The handhelds cost $3000 each, can be run over by a forklift and dropped at least 5', have a barcode reader and wifi built in. My time, the hardware, and the infrastructure cost less than $50,000.

I'd say this census project was just horribly mismanaged. I could believe these figures if the census was to be conducted in a single day.

Re:Surplus

[Gat0r30y]

I'd say this census project was just horribly mismanaged. Well of course it was, this is none other than the US Government were talking about here!

Re:Surplus

[Seraphim_72]

And why grey? They should at least be some version of green to keep with the color scheme.

Re:Surplus

[wsanders]

I bought an HP Jornada 720 surplused from the Dutch Railways from Tigerdirect for $100.

Sucks to not have Javascript on the web browser :-)

Managed to get Wifi working on it though. And VNC works, although painfully. And the battery was in good shape.

Re:Surplus

[Chyeld]

I think you know now why they scrapped the handhelds....

Re:Surplus

[lansirill]

They did indeed test this tech out. During the 2006 Census Test in Austin and (I assume) during the 2008 Dress Rehearsal. That is how they know about the problems with the system.

Re:Surplus

[RemyBR]

I live in Brazil, and here we can download an application to prepare our IR and after it's done we just upload it to the website. It's been like this for several years now, and works perfectly fine (except for some overload taking the site down for a few hours when they release the application or on the last few hours before the time for you to fill in your IR expires). The same can be said for voting machines. Voting down here is electronic for some time now. Actually I'm 30 (we're allowed, actually required, to vote since 18) and if I remember correctly just voted on paper once.

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

The handhelds were from Dell, an off the shelf model, which would use a modified version of ESRI's ArcPad map software. So we, ahem, Harris only bought a few of them for testing and development purposes. I know this because on was on the development team, but I left the company a year ago because I couldn't handle the requirements and communication issues that plagued the project. Unfortunately such issues are common at Harris.

Re:Surplus

[slittle]

Big honking balloon-ish grey buttons.

They're not buttons, just text links tarted up with CSS (which should mean it can be overridden with userstylesheets).

"Post Comment" form "Preview" and "Submit" buttons

These are real buttons (and will usually appear in the OS's native style, maybe even using real native widgets (omg!)), but I believe they can only be used for form input controls.

Re:Surplus

[Curien]

Kudos to the Census people, and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Neb) for supporting and encouraging their wise decision.

That's former Speaker. Also, he was from Illinois (which the article got wrong).

Re:Surplus

[sumdumass]

If you have been paying attention, the current cost overruns of developing a competent system was somewhere around 12 billion dollars and counting. This decision dropped that pay to .5 billion which means that their favorite contractor lost out on a lot of money.

It is likely that they are going to continue with the current contractor and just spread it over a lot longer time in an effort to save money and let hardware develop to a point of performance per dollar spent that makes it less expensive.

Re:Surplus

[hey!]

Well,not to excuse an other government IT debacle, you can't compare this to the stock taking apps you see on Intermecs and the like.

First of all, the information on a census is more complex than counting the numbers of SKUs. It also contains sensitive personal data -- not that private industry doesn't deal with that too, but it has a thoroughly dismal record of protecting privacy. Also, while some widget might not be in the right aisle, it's not likely you'll find a bunch of stuff in a store that you didn't put there, whereas a big part of the census is finding people you didn't know where there so they can be counted.

Like defense, the census does a lot of things that private agencies may do, but with a number of twists. That's why big government IT projects are often such bad news. It'd be better to do a one or two things incrementally, for example introduce PDAs and maybe GPS to handle some parts of the job for some census takers, then add more functionality and deploy more widely with every iteration. I mean, 600 million bucks? Who in his right mind would start this project with that much money? I'd start with maybe five or ten million for a pilot, and work my way up from there.

Of course, the federal contracting system is pretty much an invitation to inflate every contract a huge boondogle, but that's a different story. No politician goes to Washington promising to do a lot of small things that after three or four years will end up amounting to real progress. They all promise to go down there and shake things up, with the result that there's always a lot of shaking going on, but surprisingly little getting accomplished.

Re:Surplus

[malakai]

These are real buttons (and will usually appear in the OS's native style, maybe even using real native widgets (omg!)), but I believe they can only be used for form input controls

Input buttons can be used just about anywhere. Not required to be on a form. You can wire them up with javascript if you didn't want the default child of a form behavior.

Re:Surplus

[Bombula]

I'm interested to know what census exploitations we're expecting here in the US. How will this be corrupted for political ends in the way that an election would be by fudging the electronic voting machines?

I lived in the Arabian Gulf several years ago and the country in which I was living did their 10-years census using handheld computers. The questionaires were running in MS Access, and syncing to folders at the project's datacenter via the country's GSM mobile phone network. In this instance, the country DID fudge the census numbers. Hugely. They GROSSLY underreported population figures in order to have their doctors-per-capita, hospital-per-capita, GDP-per-capita, etc and population growth figures all fall within the qualifying limits for acceptance into the WTO. It was total and complete BS, and everyone knew it. The figures showed a ludicrously low population growth from 1996-2006 of 15%. The ACTUAL figure was closer to 100% - there is a veritable population explosion going on there, thanks to zero birth control, an average of 7+ children per family, average mothering age of

Getting into the WTO is an understandable reason to fudge the census. What reasons would the United States have?

Re:Surplus

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 600 citizens per computer, you are off by a decimal place.

Re:Surplus

[pauljuno]

Oh great .... now I'm gonna have to wait for this stuff to sell-off before I can get my bandolier of carrots?! It will be the worst woot-off ever!

Re:Surplus

[gumbi west]

> Kudos to the Census people, and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Neb) for supporting and encouraging their wise decision.

Dennis Hastert resigned and he was (R-IL).

Re:Surplus

[aztektum]

What's ridiculous is that the Constitution require the Gov to only count heads. I see no reason for them to send out a 10 page fuckin' packet

Re:Surplus

[Tarwn]

Sorry, this caught my eye:

it's not likely you'll find a bunch of stuff in a store that you didn't put there I threw together a small app to run on our warehouse guns (MX6's running windows CE) over the course of two days in order to do year end inventory. The idea was that the system had to ignore what it thought was in inventory and allow entry of anything that the teams found while blind scanning the entire inventory. And yes, we found many, many things we hadn't put there (several that the system had said shipped a couple years before in fact). If your cycle counting or inventory application doesn't allow you to scan items that are in the wrong location, or are no longer in the building, then your missing half your variances during a cycle count (the stuff thats there and shouldn't be).

Re:Surplus

[ShadowsHawk]

I'm from Illinois and I deny it too.

Re:Surplus

[Rich0]

Well, clearly you don't have Intuit/etc charging $15 to upload tax data. I paper file every year for this reason. A fancy computer program generates the return and then I mail it, because I refuse to pay money for something that is otherwise free...

Most US states on the other hand allow you to file online. I'm not asking for fancy tax software - just a simple web-based form where I can type in the numbers and hit submit. Congress keeps saying stuff like "the US ought not to be in the tax preparation software business." I say two things:

1. Fine, don't write fancy software, just create simple web forms that let you type in the numbers that you'd otherwise hand-write onto a paper form.

2. If Congress didn't make the tax code so darn complicated maybe we wouldn't need software to do tax preparation. Most state/local tax forms take all of 2 minutes to fill out.

Newsflash...

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: government to waste $x million in tax-payer money for first time in recorded history!

Promise and risk of electronic census.

[gnutoo]

I've done a census and think GPS enabled devices would greatly increase accuracy but it will also greatly increase costs. A sad fact is that people don't really go all the places they are supposed to go and honest enumerators don't last long in places that stick to quotas. GPS and time tracking devices will prove that the enumerator actually visted each and every place they should have. A mashup with something like Google maps will show if areas have been neglected. An honest census will take significantly more manpower than the one we have now.

There are, of course, the same kinds of risks we have seen with electronic voting. The only solution is to be as transparent as possible. Non free software is a no-no.

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[Anonymous Coward]

A sad fact is that people don't really go all the places they are supposed to go and honest enumerators don't last long in places that stick to quotas.

Accusing US gov't workers of incompetence.

There are, of course, the same kinds of risks we have seen with electronic voting.

Thinly veiled Diebold reference.

Non free software is a no-no.

Criticism of IP and closed source software in the same breath.

You hit the karma trifecta!

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[smilindog2000]

How about doing a Google Android app? Cheap GPS enabled phones should soon be available, and there's still time to enter the developer challenge

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is non free a no-no? Isn't the real no-no having unverifable, non-redundant storage of raw data? You have a great point otherwise. Just don't make this an OSS soapbox.

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be under the illusion that the Census Bureau has a 100% accurate map on which to do that sort of tracking. That isn't the case and not all jurisdictions are participating in the LUCA process to improve the data accuracy. I happen to be sitting in a major NC city working on it for a client so this isn't idle speculation. And please don't begin to that because something displays on the screen the data behind it is up to snuff.

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[rhiorg]

To overcome the manpower issue, we an simply deputize every resident of the United States as a self-census taker. The results would be extraordinarily accurate!

This coincides with my RFID-at-birth idea, which will provide an accurate result after 70-80 years when the installed base of non-RFID kids has expired.

Re:Promise and risk of electronic census.

[inviolet]

A sad fact is that people don't really go all the places they are supposed to go and honest enumerators don't last long in places that stick to quotas. GPS and time tracking devices will prove that the enumerator actually visted each and every place they should have.

Indeed. During the 2000 census I personally knew one gal who sat at home making up the answers on her census sheets, rather than going out and hoofing it as promised. Sometimes humans just leave me dumbstruck. If I was queen of the world I would have smited her right then and there: sorry hon, egregious free-riding doesn't fly any more.

As another poster pointed out, a GPS track of an enumerator's travels would not positively tell us whether they'd visited the relevant homes, because we don't always know who is in which home. But the enumerators don't know that. As far as they are concerned, any one of their reports could be checked against the GPS location in which it was entered. That would bring compliance back up.

OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to scroll through long pages of comments, not to aggravate carpal tunnel syndrome by clicking on a widget for every thread/article in a 300-comment thread. The the lines/colors/boxes in the new CSS make it impossible to easily skim/scan these pages, especially in classic mode (no_d2=1) and flat (mode=flat).

I remember seeing this ugliness on idle.slashdot.org when it first came up (and never went there again :), but I stupidly ignored the implication of the ugliness. It looks like today's gonna be Greasemonkey time. Does anyone have a link to, or a cached copy of, the old no_d2=1 (classic mode) style sheet?

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[moderatorrater]

I absolutely agree. I chose to keep the old comment system because i like it. It's functional, it's simple, I liked the design, and it was easy for me to read. I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to take those people who chose not to use the new discussion system and upgrade them anyway.

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to take those people who chose not to use the new discussion system and upgrade them anyway.

Especially since they said that classic mode would remain available just a few weeks ago. (I just wish I could find the /. article in which Taco said so.)

It looks like "Promise and risk of electronic census. (Score:3, Insightful)" is the only post in the thread with the thick box around it. Is it because it's been modded up at least once, and no other posts have been modded up? What do these boxes even denote, anyway? (In classic mode without Javascript, the q/w/e/a/s/d keybindings aren't in effect anyways...)

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[default luser]

Yeah, you know that the new discussion system is totally broken on IE6. Of course, I knew this six months ago when I elected not to test it, and since then they have fixed nothing.

What's with the duplo-block-sized titles, do we suddenly have armies of babies and old people reading the site?

And to stay on-topic: my stepfather was working for the census while they considered this transition, and it was the most painful decision they had to make in all his years working there. Digitizing something as flexible as paper meant that you actually HURT efficiency of data collection. Think about it: with paper, you can easily correct mistakes, skip questions (or go in a different order). Most important: with the computer, you're SOL if you drop the computer or the battery dies, or the software crashes.

And while digital data collection reduces costs at the back-end (the data is already digitized), the fact is that collecting the data is the most expensive part of the census process, and any increase in costs there erased the gains at the back-end.

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[The Moof]

Just whipped this up this morning: Comment Tweaks

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[anothy]

What's with the duplo-block-sized titles, do we suddenly have armies of babies and old people reading the site?

suddenly?

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[FrankieBaby1986]

Think about it: with paper, you can easily correct mistakes, skip questions (or go in a different order).
How is this any different from digital??? If the digital systems don't allow this, there are serious flaws.

Most important: with the computer, you're SOL if you drop the computer or the battery dies, or the software crashes.
This is partially true, but similar can happen to paper. If you drop the paper in a puddle, you're SOL, if the papers get ripped up, your SOL. Battery and other problems can be mitigated by using an internet connection to upload data to a more reliable data storage location on a periodic basis, minimizing the amount of work that would need to be redone, as the 'deposits' could be much more frequent than with paper.

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, dude! You rock!

Your userStyles.css gave me the last bits of the puzzle to fix not only the fugly buttons, but the boxes as well, and to grok a bit more about how styles nest within each other. (Disregard the other AC response asking you for a box fix, 'cuz that was me. :)

Disclaimer: I'm a relative n00b to fiddling with CSS; today was the straw that broke the camel's back. The syntax is pretty easy even if you know almost nothing. Just view source, look at The Moof's example, and change a few of the colors to see how it works. Then tweak away. As soon as I saw how he thinned the comment boxes, it was obvious as to how to delete them altogether. (I may try leaving them in place at 1px width and green for a week to see how I like it. The idea isn't that bad, the execution from Taco this morning was fugly.)

Anyways, I came up with the following two changes to get rid of all the boxes/borders.

/* The horizontal line beneath the comments can be deleted by changing The Moof's example to read like this */
.commentBody, .commentSub {
padding-bottom:0 !important;
}

/* And the vertical bars to the right of some, but not all, things on the home page, menu bar, and some of the comments can be deleted by fiddling with */
.commentBody, .commentSub, div.title, div.details {
border-right: 0 !important;
}

Re:OT: Anyone have a link to the old /. CSS?

[default luser]

Oh, sure, you can see the overall advantages of an IDEAL fully-digital system. But the fact was, this system had shortcomings: the kind of design compromises and limitations you normally see with the lowest bidder. Imagine a system where you can't easily correct mistakers or go out-of-order because there wasn't enough money for such niceties Imagine instead, jumping through menus just to go back a page). Now throw onto the heap a mix of myriad bugs that may cause partial or complete loss of data, often without any indication to the user. There are tons of real-world examples of this, so why is it so hard to imagine for a custom hardware/software device having such teething problems?

Wireless? Sure, if you can get the infarstructure to be reliable, which is almost impossible out the gate. Even if you use commercial wireless carriers, their coverage is still spottry in many parts of the country.

Eventually, they will make a digital data collection system that works almost as well as it's advertised on paper...but until that point, you have to weigh the disbenefits of using early-revision digital versus paying the cost of staying with paper. Although it is easier to stick with paper for 2010, I expect that paper will be gone by the time the 2020 census rolls around. They just need more time to get more things right.

Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Up here in Canuckistan (you know, Canada ..) the last 2 census (censii?) I've received the detailed long questionaire. Both times, I've refused to fill them in because there are questions that are either racist or illegal, or both.

Both times, they've said I must, it's the law, I could get fined, go to jail, yada yada yada.

I just say "Fine, let's tell it to a judge."

By my census, it's me 2 : gubbimint 0.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Azarael]

Examples please..

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[BigJClark]

Same brother! (or sister)

I do the exact same thing! Its good to see I'm not alone. I refuse to slip into the ignorant, "yes-sir" person.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[GregPK]

I think they simply should have contracted with Mosaic Inc. Who already has the systems and people in place to handle the census.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[stranger_to_himself]

Up here in Canuckistan (you know, Canada ..) the last 2 census (censii?) I've received the detailed long questionaire. Both times, I've refused to fill them in because there are questions that are either racist or illegal, or both.

That's just stupid. We need census information for service provision. If a significant proportion of people withhold their details, they have no right to complain when there aren't enough schools or hospital beds or even houses in the right places. How else are governments supposed to get demographic information?

If you don't want to include race information, just put 'Jedi' like everybody else.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[zappepcs]

Welcome to the 21st century. There are some things that you might like to know about life here:

The local city or county authority knows who you are by your billing information, water usage, electric usage, and cars registered to your address. Additionally, what information is not known about you from your ISP can usually be garnered from the telephone people (they hear everything you know).

We use building permits to know how much activity is happening in new homes and home modifications and real estate records for sales of existing homes.

Put all that together with tax records, medical and insurance records and about the only thing we don't know about you is who at the last fucking piece of pizza (I wanted that for breakfast).

While total information awareness is only just now starting to take off, we already have a huge amount of data.

Back in 1893 (your time) it was necessary to collect information on residents because we just didn't have all this information before.

P.S. Governments are responsible for schools in the same way that they are responsible for ensuring enough public transportation. Insurance industries can tell us how many beds will be profitable and that has NOTHING to do with the number of people in the area.

Not sure where you are from, but around here I don't imagine that too many illegals actually participate in the census taking. For some reason TimeWarner is apparently convinced that there are enough of them to put on EXTRA Spanish language channels though. Wonder how they knew that without accurate census data?

Once again, welcome to 21st century America.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[stranger_to_himself]

The local city or county authority knows who you are by your billing information, water usage, electric usage, and cars registered to your address. Additionally, what information is not known about you from your ISP can usually be garnered from the telephone people (they hear everything you know).

I'm from the UK. The local authority has nothing to do with my utilities. Imagine the row if utility companies started supplying records to the government.

We use building permits to know how much activity is happening in new homes and home modifications and real estate records for sales of existing homes.

Building permits and real estate records tell you nothing about the use of homes, ie who lives there. Electoral records don't count the number of children or cover the needs of the community (for school/hospital planning etc).

Besides which, tax records, health service and insurance records cannot be shared across departments because of privacy laws, much less made publically available, whereas the census information is all publically available at the community level (see www.statistics.gov.uk).

For some reason TimeWarner is apparently convinced that there are enough of them to put on EXTRA Spanish language channels though. Wonder how they knew that without accurate census data?

Market research will tell TimeWarner a lot of things. Think of the census as market reserach for the unprofitable services you take for granted, then tell me it's unnecessary.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Up here in Canuckistan (you know, Canada ..) the last 2 census (censii?) I've received the detailed long questionaire. Both times, I've refused to fill them in because there are questions that are either racist or illegal, or both.

That's just stupid. We need census information for service provision. If a significant proportion of people withhold their details, they have no right to complain when there aren't enough schools or hospital beds or even houses in the right places. How else are governments supposed to get demographic information?

If you don't want to include race information, just put 'Jedi' like everybody else.

They tried that argument with me, and I told them they were full of shit. "We need it to help administer programs like Medicare." LIE. Everyone has a medicare card - this is CANADA, FFS!. You mention the provisioning of "schools, hospitals or even houses in the right place." Race better NOT have anything to do with the allocation of schools or hospitals. As for houses, that's decided by the private sector, last I looked, but again, race or "ethnic origin of your parents" better not play a factor in the provisioning of housing. There is NO need to track this particular statistic in a country like Canada.

I talked to some aboriginals, and they said " That, we just throw them all in the garbage." Not one case of any native person ever being charged. Just "plain ole white folks" who are too chicken-shit to stand up for what makes this country decent.

I found the question on race in the first one VERY offensive. The second census, where they changed it to "What is your parents' ethnic origin" is clearly illegal under Canada's privacy laws. I have no more right to "inform" on someone else's race than I do on their sexual habits, etc. I told them that if they want my parent's info, they have to ask them - they can either make a VERY long-distance phone call or write them care of the dead letter office, since they're both dead.

A large portion of the population finds these questions have no relevancy in a modern world, that they push outdated stereotypes, and that the government should find better things to do than break their own privacy laws. Funny how they refuse to take me to court, despite several invitations to do so.

Speaking of court - I went down to the courthouse this morning and picked up a judgment against the government. I sued them (and I argued my case myself on Tuesday - against a lawyer) and won, like always. The judge ruled the government had acted illegally, and had to return my $$$ "without delay."

As for answering "Jedi", that's just encouraging them to keep such questions on the census so that the majority accept it - like the "security theatre" in the US.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Random Destruction]

Not sure where you are from, but around here I don't imagine that too many illegals actually participate in the census taking. For some reason TimeWarner is apparently convinced that there are enough of them to put on EXTRA Spanish language channels though. Wonder how they knew that without accurate census data? Part of taking a proper census is finding a way to calculate the undercount of the census. This undercount represents the number of people they think are skipping out on the census. With this knowledge you can get a fairly accurate picture even if many people skip out.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Up here in Canuckistan (you know, Canada ..) the last 2 census (censii?) I've received the detailed long questionaire. Both times, I've refused to fill them in because there are questions that are either racist or illegal, or both.

Examples please..

The last one asked "What is the ethnic origin of your parents?" This was a lame attempt to replace the "What is your race?" question from the previous census.

The ONLY way I would answer such a question is with a court order - and I'd argue against it to a judge first. They just refuse to take it that far, because they know that, not only is the question morally offensive, but it also infringes on my parent's right to privacy of their personal information - that's quite simply the law up here. If they want, they can ask my parents. Just bring a shovel so they can dig 6 feet deep.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[stranger_to_himself]

Hmm. I've obviously trodden on a personally sensitive issue with you so I'll leave it, except to mention that the French government does not allow the collection of any details of race at all, for any reason. This is thought to have been a contributing factor in the recent riots in Paris, caused because the increasing disenfranchisement of an entire community had gone essentially unnoticed. The French cannot see problems or target social interventions within racial groups, because they don't know who or where they are. I think this is a problem, although I do understand the argument that the data has potential to be used in a racist way.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

If we don't fight it, it becomes accepted as "the new pink" - the "norm."

We see new erosions of freedoms south of the border ... we could be next if we are not vigilant.

Bad enough we've had racist governments elected at the provincial level - the Parti Quebecois with their ethnocentric policies, dividing people into Quebecois, Bloke, and "Les Autres" (french, english, and "the others" - often spoken by the older, more ignorant generation, with a curled lip) ...

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[bberens]

If a significant proportion of people withhold their details, they have no right to complain when there aren't enough schools or hospital beds or even houses in the right places. How else are governments supposed to get demographic information? When the teacher:student ratio starts creeping up, build more schools. When the doctor:patient ratio starts creeping up, build more hospitals. That's the beauty of capitalism. Supply and demand sort of sorts itself out. Oh that's right, you've socialized medicine so some bean counter gets to decide how many doctors per citizens are sufficient. Good luck to you.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Bryansix]

No I'm pretty sure you screwed yourself over there. You should just fill out the information on number of people in your household and leave the rest blank. Now your city will get less funding and your life will suffer because of it. You might not feel the pinch right away but eventually you'll see it but then you'll blame it on some one else when you are to blame for not filling out the census packet.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[billcopc]

It is only a problem because people are hypocrits when it comes to issues of race.

If you're not racist, then race should NOT matter at all. Anything less makes you racist to some degree. Even if you think you're helping one group, what you're really doing is neglecting everyone else.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[stranger_to_himself]

The thing is, race does matter, and you can't make racism go away by pretending it doesn't exist, or saying it shouldn't exist (which of course it shouldn't). Issues do affect different racial groups in different ways. By denying this you prevent the application of solutions where problems arise, making them far worse.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[LittleRunningGag]

Thats like when we purchased our house. The first piece of mail we received was from the city, and asked me to affirm whether or not I was Roman Catholic so that the right school district would receive my taxes. I threw it in the garbage. My religion (or lack thereof) is none of their mother fucking business.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[greyhueofdoubt]

Why is that so upsetting to you? Gross estimations of your ethnicity can be made by simply looking at you; if you leave your house, your ethnicity is essentially public information, right?

I think that in progressive societies (societies w/o genocide, for example), understanding population characteristics, race included, could be a very useful thing. For example, finding out that one county's minority population is 13% below the poverty line, while another county's rate is only 5%. It would be useful to know that situation even exists; then, you can try to find out what the difference is and try to help the situation.

There is a happy medium between affirmative-action-type policies and nothing. It is useful for sociologists to have this kind of information.

Unless you're the tinfoil-hat type, in which case I just wasted 5 minutes. Then OK, yes, they're out to get you.

-b

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Immortal Poet]

If you're not racist, then race should NOT matter at all. Anything less makes you racist to some degree. It is absolutely ludicrous to purport that someone becomes a racist by acknowledging the mere existence of race. Being aware of the differences between different groups of people is one thing; believing those differences makes one group better than another is what racism really is. Don't be naive enough to get the two confused.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[ORBAT]

Ron Paul, is that you?

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Fri13]

developing countries still need to do census by paper filling or by door 2 door questioning. There is at least two country in whole world what can do census with computer, no need to contact persons. Denmark and Finland (in year 2001).

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[flappinbooger]

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine was dating the "racially indeterminant" guy. Couldn't tell "the ethnic origin of his parents", staying consistent with trolltalk's post above. And in the end he thought she was a Latino, IIRC.

Personally, I like it when people put down "human" as their race.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[flappinbooger]

You keep using the word WE. Are YOU with THEM?

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[lansirill]

Despite having all of that information available, the Census is mandated by the Constitution so we're going to have it unless we pass an amendment getting rid of it. There was an attempt to replace the Decennial Census with a survey-based estimate of the population but Congress did not allow it.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[boris111]

I always check the box Native Alaskan Inuit. And tell my friends to. My hope one day is to see on the census report a large influx of Inuit in the area.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Anne Thwacks]

I am in the UK too, and given the news in the past year, I think we can all be quietly confident that everything that could be known about all of us can be obtained on a DVD for a few rupees in any market in Bangalore or a couple Naira in Mushin market in Lagos or $1.98 in Red Square, Moscow. There is certainly no need to be spending billions to gather this data.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

In some provinces, the Catholic church used to be allowed to impose a surtax on the property of their adherents. In Soviet Quebec, CHURCH TAX YOU!

Nowadays, even the courts have "wised up" - no more "Put your hand on the bible and swear ..." - just "Please raise your right hand and swear ..." they pulled the "wiggly man on a stick" years ago. Last year, when I pulled jury duty, the whole "swear on the bible" bit was still the default, but you could just give a solemn declaration. This week, I didn't see a bible in sight.

I guess it was easier to pull the bibles than to include the Koran, Book of Morons^H^H^Hmon, Dune, Prayer for Dummies, Pastafarian Guide to 5-Star Restaurants, HHGTTG, etc.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[badasscat]

Why is that so upsetting to you? Gross estimations of your ethnicity can be made by simply looking at you; if you leave your house, your ethnicity is essentially public information, right? I pretty much agree. I can't figure out why you'd get so bent out of shape about being asked your race on a form unless it's some misguided application of a politically correct agenda... or you're for some reason embarrassed by your race, in which case you've got other problems. Just asking a person's race is not racist, anymore than asking a person what country they're from is xenophobic. (And I'm the kind of person that thinks you don't need to be conscious of being a racist to be a racist. But as Freud said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Not every question about race carries implied racism behind it.)

I also agree that it's useful knowledge for the government to know the demographic makeup of its citizens. Immigration patterns, for example. If you know that 1 million Chinese passed through the port of New York between 2000 and 2010, and 400,000 of them still live in New York while 600,000 of them live elsewhere on the east coast, then that can tell you what sorts of immigration patterns you might see in the near future. And that will help aid in city planning.

And this is not kept secret; everyone has access to census info, and it's probably actually *more* useful for others outside the government to have this info.

Regardless, on the US forms, while it doesn't seem to be specified anywhere, I don't think it's strictly required that you answer anything other than your name and address. I could be wrong on that, but the Constitution simply says that every person must be counted; demographics aren't mentioned anywhere.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[bberens]

If I could mod in this thread, I'd mod that funny... but it was my post you responded to, so I can't. Anyways, I chuckled.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Kozz]

Just "plain ole white folks" who are too chicken-shit to stand up for what makes this country decent.

I was really interested in what you had to say, but then your own racial generalization kind of turned me off...

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Why is that so upsetting to you? Gross estimations of your ethnicity can be made by simply looking at you; if you leave your house, your ethnicity is essentially public information, right?

Let's see ...

When you buy something at the store, you're standing in line with other members of the public, so your purchases are essentially public information, right?

When you take a book out of the library, your reading tastes are essentially public information, right?

When you visit a hospital or clinic and are sitting with strangers in a waiting room, your medical problems are essentially public information, right?

When you take a book out of the library, your reading tastes are essentially public information, right?

When you pick a dvd off the shelf to rent, your viewing interests are essentially public information, right?

When you shop for groceries, your eating habits are essentially public information, right?

When you buy a present for that someone special to surprise them, your purchase is essentially public information, right?

So, where do you draw the line?

For example, finding out that one county's minority population is 13% below the poverty line, while another county's rate is only 5%. It would be useful to know that situation even exists; then, you can try to find out what the difference is and try to help the situation.

There is a happy medium between affirmative-action-type policies and nothing. It is useful for sociologists to have this kind of information.

So you would make it that aid to help people escape poverty should be targeted by skin colour, rather than need? Come on, poor is poor - when you're broke, hungry, and homeless, your skin colour doesn't make your stomach growl any less.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[LittleRunningGag]

I just couldn't believe that it was even sent out. Isn't it illegal for government to ask me what my religion is? I mean, it wasn't, "Which school board would you like your taxes to go to." It was, "You must affirm to whether or not you are Roman Catholic."

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

I always check the box Native Alaskan Inuit. And tell my friends to. My hope one day is to see on the census report a large influx of Inuit in the area.

CENSUS DATA DISPROVE GLOBAL WARMING! WORLD GETTING COLDER, NOT WARMER! FILM AT 11.

You should be able to get a "research grant" from Exxon to fund your activism.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[badasscat]

The local city or county authority knows who you are by your billing information, water usage, electric usage, and cars registered to your address.

The only one of those that my local government knows anything about me from (and remember, local != federal) is my car registration. And the only thing I gave them on that form was make, model, mileage and address. So if their purpose is to know how many Jeep Grand Cherokees there are in the country, well, I guess they've got it covered.

Water and electric usage are handled by private companies. Ditto for gas. This information is not available to the government without a subpoena. (Oh sure, they could probably get it under the Patriot Act or something, but it's not like there's a big browseable database residing on some CIA computer showing the number of times residents of Nassau County, NY watered their lawns last year.)

Additionally, what information is not known about you from your ISP can usually be garnered from the telephone people (they hear everything you know).

Provided you have a traditional telephone. More and more people don't. There are reasons why the cell phone providers weren't implicated in the whole FISA thing...

We use building permits to know how much activity is happening in new homes and home modifications and real estate records for sales of existing homes.

Again, controlled by local governments. As anyone who's tried to get these records will tell you, obtaining even *one* is a major chore. You think the feds have gotten every city and county in the nation on board to just email them all these records every day? Ha! Talk about a conspiracy theory... the JFK and 9/11 theories would be nothing compared to that! Cities and counties just voluntarily sending real estate records! Oh, that's rich.

Put all that together with tax records, medical and insurance records and about the only thing we don't know about you is who at the last fucking piece of pizza (I wanted that for breakfast).

Tax records are the only records you've so far mentioned that the federal government has fairly easy access to.

Insurance records are no easier for the government to get than any other private purchase. And not that they'll tell them much anyway.

P.S. Governments are responsible for schools in the same way that they are responsible for ensuring enough public transportation. Insurance industries can tell us how many beds will be profitable and that has NOTHING to do with the number of people in the area.

Wait... schools have beds now? It's been a long time since I was in school, I guess...

Talk about a mixed message. I don't even know what you're trying to say here.

Not sure where you are from, but around here I don't imagine that too many illegals actually participate in the census taking.

They get counted whether they want to be or not. I'm guessing you're not old enough to remember the last census, or you didn't live in New York at the time (as you seem to imply you do now).

Census takers will go door to door and count heads manually if they have to. They'll keep going back until somebody answers.

Yes, there's probably an undercount, but there's probably an undercount of everybody until we get statistical sampling. Proportionally, illegals probably aren't undercounted anymore than legals.

I take your point that there's all this data floating around out there about us now. But the thing that you and other conspiracy theorists fail to take into account is that humans have to do something with all that data. And when you're talking about a government, you're talking about a big, disorganized bureaucracy that's already comprised of imperfect human beings. There is simply no way the federal government would be able to get much of anything useful out of all this data that's out there, coming from different agencies in different formats, much of which i

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Just "plain ole white folks" who are too chicken-shit to stand up for what makes this country decent.

I was really interested in what you had to say, but then your own racial generalization kind of turned me off...

I was pointing out that it is the government who is selectively enforcing the census based on skin colour and ancestry. BTW, anyone who is won't stand up against the government when the government's policies are wrong deserves the chickenshit label, no matter what their skin colour.

Everyone is equal in and before the law. That's in our constitution. That the government not only selectively enforces the laws of the land, but does so in some cases based on perceived "race" or skin colour, or who your parents were, or your sex or gender, is wrong, unjust, and illegal.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[CharlieHedlin]

Here in Austin, TX our water, trash, waste water, and electricity are all provided by the city owned utility.

Our electric rates are quite a bit lower than in surrounding cities with commercial power, so its hard to complain, even if I don't agree with the principal. Our rates used to be among the highest (lots of natural gas generation).

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

I just couldn't believe that it was even sent out. Isn't it illegal for government to ask me what my religion is? I mean, it wasn't, "Which school board would you like your taxes to go to." It was, "You must affirm to whether or not you are Roman Catholic."

The sad part - a LOT of people believe that they have to reply one way or the other. "It's the law" or some such shit. So they unknowingly get rooked into paying to support another generation of paedophiles (for the RC church surtax) or a school system they may be in total disagreement with ...

Interesting tie-in ... there's a private french roman-catholic-based high school that no longer teaches anything about WW2. We couldn't believe there are adults here in their late 20's who have no knowledge whatsoever of the Nazis, the Holocaust, etc. But they sure know that "the jews killed baby jeebus". The current pope would feel right at home.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Idiomatick]

So you would make it that aid to help people escape poverty should be targeted by skin colour, rather than need? Come on, poor is poor - when you're broke, hungry, and homeless, your skin colour doesn't make your stomach growl any less.

No, if a visible minority has been found to make less money and have a high percentage below the poverty line. Or many other issues... There might be something bad going on in the area. If the numbers are really bad the local government can be told to setup awareness blahblah, make certain that there is no discrimination in the work place or in hiring. There is no reason to know this stuff other than to help make sure there is an equality of opportunity. There are lots of questions on the census aimed at this type of information.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Wog]

I pretty much agree. I can't figure out why you'd get so bent out of shape about being asked your race on a form unless it's some misguided application of a politically correct agenda... or you're for some reason embarrassed by your race, in which case you've got other problems. Just asking a person's race is not racist, anymore than asking a person what country they're from is xenophobic. (And I'm the kind of person that thinks you don't need to be conscious of being a racist to be a racist. But as Freud said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Not every question about race carries implied racism behind it.) The problem with asking about race is that there is no other possible motive for the question other than to judge how social programs might be directed at one racial group over another. My thinking is that such preferential treatment, good or bad, working against minorities or majorities, is racism. There is no compelling reason for the government to know or care.

I also agree that it's useful knowledge for the government to know the demographic makeup of its citizens. Immigration patterns, for example. If you know that 1 million Chinese passed through the port of New York between 2000 and 2010, and 400,000 of them still live in New York while 600,000 of them live elsewhere on the east coast, then that can tell you what sorts of immigration patterns you might see in the near future. And that will help aid in city planning. What exactly would that accomplish that a simple headcount could not? More likely, such information would aid in either catering specifically to Chinese interests, or as a way of "identifying the problem of the Chinese invasion among us!" Both, as far as I'm aware, are racially-motivated.

And this is not kept secret; everyone has access to census info, and it's probably actually *more* useful for others outside the government to have this info. Then let them pay for it. Don't force me to do someone's marketing research at gunpoint through taxes.

Regardless, on the US forms, while it doesn't seem to be specified anywhere, I don't think it's strictly required that you answer anything other than your name and address. I could be wrong on that, but the Constitution simply says that every person must be counted; demographics aren't mentioned anywhere. For once, you're correct. The mandate is limited only to a headcount. They'll try to bug you about the rest, but when you tell them to pound sand because they've got all the information you're required to give them, they'll leave you alone.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you would make it that aid to help people escape poverty should be targeted by skin colour, rather than need? Come on, poor is poor - when you're broke, hungry, and homeless, your skin colour doesn't make your stomach growl any less.

The point you're missing is that if a certain ethnic group in a certain geographical area seems to be doing significantly worse than a majority group, you can then come at the problem from a cultural standpoint, rather than just throwing money at them...

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[MrYotsuya]

I talked to some aboriginals, and they said " That, we just throw them all in the garbage." Not one case of any native person ever being charged. Just "plain ole white folks" who are too chicken-shit to stand up for what makes this country decent.

I find that odd, since First Nations are very much over-represented in our prison population. In any case, don't complain if your municipality doesn't get enough federal funding for your pet service, as each withheld census form takes away thousands of dollars from the budget.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[greyhueofdoubt]

>>When you buy something at the store, you're standing in line with other members of the public, so your purchases are essentially public information, right?

Yes, they are. If it happens in public, then it is public.

>>When you take a book out of the library, your reading tastes are essentially public information, right?

Yes, they are, if someone sees what you checked out. You could be secretive about it (wear a dark jacket, use an alias, cover up the books with a bag), but if it's a secret, I'd recommend not using the PUBLIC library to do your reading.

>>When you visit a hospital or clinic and are sitting with strangers in a waiting room, your medical problems are essentially public information, right?

Oh for crying out loud, I knew this had to be a troll. Yes of course they are public. If you are coughing, they know you are coughing. If you are shitting yourself, they know you are incontinent. If you have AIDS and are just sitting there, then no, it's not public. Your medical problems are public the same way your eyeglasses are public. OMG people know I don't have 20/20 vision!

>>When you shop for groceries, your eating habits are essentially public information, right?

See above.

>>When you buy a present for that someone special to surprise them, your purchase is essentially public information, right?

Are you for real? Of course it is. Who the hell is going to keep track of your purchase in order to ruin the surprise? If you don't want Bob to know that you bought him a dialysis machine, then don't buy it in front of Bob's best friend. If Brenda sees it, and she doesn't know Bob, then who cares? If it's a secret, then buy it online (where the information is encrypted and NOT public).

>>So, where do you draw the line?

I draw the line at my front door. What I do in public is public. If I'm a bad driver, that's public info- I drive poorly on public roads. If I buy oatmeal at the store, that's public, too.

Medical RECORDS and legal matters are a special category that are not public; However, if you talk about them or demonstrate them in public (coughing, crapping yourself, going on TV to talk about it) then no, they are not private anymore.

>>So you would make it that aid to help people escape poverty should be targeted by skin colour, rather than need?

Another response to you already cleared this up eloquently.

Man, I think I just got trolled. Don't expect another response.

-b

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

They already have all this information, sans the "ethnicicity" info, in their current records (unemployment claims, etc). If an area is hard-hit by job losses, why should the people's skin colour make a difference?

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

In any case, don't complain if your municipality doesn't get enough federal funding for your pet service, as each withheld census form takes away thousands of dollars from the budget.

BS and Double BS - they backstop the census results with other data, such as drivers' licenses, tax returns, the permanent electoral list, medicare records, etc., AND they already know that a certain portion of the population will NOT fill in the forms, and add the appropriate "fudge factor."

Don't be so quick to go "OMG if you don't fill it in you're costing everyone money!!!" Only the most naive statisticians would depend on raw census data.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Arterion]

I don't know. Once you start analyzing differences using scientific methods, you could try to empirically say one race was "superior" to another in some way.

Because of that slippery slope, I think a lot of people would argue that even suggesting that there might be a difference (beyond skin color) between races is racism.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[countach]

Most people don't actually know their race. They did a study asking some Brits if they were 100% British. They found that people who thought they were 100% Brit actually had big chunks of African, American, Arabic, even Chinese, without having any clue. So what is race? Some people might be 100% something or other, but what if you put on your census form, 15% Chinese, 10% African, 20% Arabic etc? What is the point?

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[skyblizzer]

Go Blackwhitek iss .. c om where many are chatting this online, also i met hundreds of cute black and white ladies...

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[Idiomatick]

It SHOULDNT, thats the point! If you get information back that there are alot of unemployment claims in an area you would try to create more jobs. If you also knew that every unemployed person was african-american then you have a totally different problem. You would obviously have to take a different approach to the situation.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[cbreaker]

There's a difference between public information ala "seeing someone's groceries" and keeping track of all grocery purchases in the last 10 years and making it available via an online search mechanism.

Personally, I don't care if someone sees that I like Frosted Flakes, but I am uncomfortable with that very same information being stored in a database for god knows what reason in the future.

It's not the information, it's how it's stored and made available that's the problem.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[actiondan]

>I draw the line at my front door.

So what's your problem with the OP sending the census person away from his _front door_ without the information they demanded from him?

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[nebosuke]

Scientific methods can prove differences exist, and quantify those differences objectively. It simply shows you what is there.

Interpretation of that data as far as 'X proves A is superior to B' is orthogonal to the science.

E.g., scientific study identified the greater occurrence of sickle cell anemia in blacks, with very strong evidence that that was a result of historical disease pressure from malaria. That is objective scientific data. Judgment on whether or not that 'proved' anything regarding superiority or inferiority in comparison to any other ethnic group would be subjective and unscientific by its very nature.

Subjective judgment calls are made within a given philosophical context. Science is controversial with respect to race not because it is inaccurate, but because it potentially puts societal values at odds with each other.

The nature vs. nurture debate is a great example of a similar and related situation.

1. 1. Societal value: All humans are created equal.
2. 2. Societal value: High IQ is better than low IQ.

Consequence: science showing that genetics plays a dominant role in determining IQ causes a societal kernel panic because it either contradicts value 1, or forces society to discard value 2 to preserve value 1 in light of the new information. Note that this has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of the science itself.

The reality, however, is that every society has values that it clings to so dearly that it will gladly discard science that forces it to confront contradictions with those values.

Some ideas are simply held to be much more valuable than whatever the facts may be.

Everyone is guilty of that from time to time, whether or not we're conscious of it.

That is the common root cause that allowed both historical racism and continues to allow today's hyper-sensitive politically correct atmosphere to coexist with science.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[greyhueofdoubt]

As I mentioned much earlier, race of ultimately public info if you ever leave the house. Things like income, political affiliation, etc are all private until you make it public.

I started discussing this with the OP because every time the topic of the census comes up, he tells the same rant about not telling the gov't his race (and putting the gov't in its place in the process). This struck as either paranoid or short-sighted, as gross estimations of race (as I mentioned already) can be made in a public setting.

There is more to this, like what race has to do with social reform or poverty or other demographics, and that is way beyond the scope of the thread. If the OP had said that his income (for example) was private, I probably wouldn't have responded in the first place (it is private). Although, in the U.S., the gov't already knows exactly how much money you make. So I guess it's a moot point.

-b

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

It SHOULDNT, thats the point! If you get information back that there are alot of unemployment claims in an area you would try to create more jobs. If you also knew that every unemployed person was african-american then you have a totally different problem. You would obviously have to take a different approach to the situation.

You should try to create the jobs regardless of the person's skin colour. And the approach is the same, regardless of a person's skin colour. Money (and investment, and the job creation it allows) is colour-blind. It goes where there's an opportunity to make more money. Businesses that would refuse to hire the more talented individual because he/she is black, or gay, or whatever, will have less success in the marketplace.

"Targeting" job creation based on, to use your example, skin colour, is denigrating the person - it gives others the "excuse" of saying that they owe their job to a program that gives preferences to a minority group, and not merit, providing a lever not just against the individual, but against everyone who is a member of the minority.

Same thing with education. "You only got in because you're [insert identifying characteristic]."

In a decent society, there wouldn't be any need for targeted programs, because everyone would be colour-blind. Government programs did less for African-Americans than "All In The Family" did by showing how stupid bigots are. Same as decades of Surgeon General's warnings about smoking being bad for your health didn't do anything, but making it "uncool", taking it off TV and out of movies, did.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[ToastyKen]

So you would make it that aid to help people escape poverty should be targeted by skin colour, rather than need? Come on, poor is poor - when you're broke, hungry, and homeless, your skin colour doesn't make your stomach growl any less.

I would say that the relevance depends on the cause of the poverty. In the United States, I imagine there are many cases of poverty where the at least one of the root causes is related to race, either because of discrimination, or culture, or other reasons, and combating these root causes may well require taking race into account. Poor may be poor, and the color of your skin doesn't make your stomach growl any less, but it may have had a role in your becoming poor in the first place. More importantly, the color of your skin may have a role in what remedies will work.

As one of the other repliers said, the effective solutions may lie not in just opening soup kitchens, but in effecting wider behavioral change.

The "race doesn't matter" argument reminds me of Stephen Colbert's gimmick, where, whenever he has a black guest, he says, "People tell me you're black, but I wouldn't be able to see that myself, because I'm blind to color." It's funny because we all know that we're not blind to race, and so pretending that we are isn't always the right solution.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[ToastyKen]

Sorry, to clarify, I'm not saying I believe that races inherently make people different in any biological way, which I don't, but rather that people are in practice biased and racist in our society today, and so your race has an effect on your life because these perceptions affect how people act toward you. (And, for that matter, your own perception of your own race probably affects how you act as well.)

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[psychicsword]

Sound like someone has something to hide. If anyone ask about my ethnicity I would happily say that my family has been here so long that we cant trace our roots back past the civil war. I mean it isn't like they are going to use the information to decide how much to pay you or how much to tax you. and if the questions bother you that much you can ignore those questions and only answer the ones that aren't about race. Though I would still answer them because it gives the government some idea of who is being represented and how the economy is doing.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

Sound like someone has something to hide.

For refusing to fill in the census because some of the questions are illegal on their face, and they have refused several requests from me to take me to court? If they're not ready to justify their actions before a judge, after threatening legal action, they can shove their census where the sun don't shine.

Besides, if you feel that way, would you object to someone installing web cams in your bedroom and toilet? After all, you have nothing to hide, citizen. And demanding your ID at every street corner, every store purchase, etc.? After all, you have nothing to hide, comrade.

It has nothing to do with "hiding" anything, and everything to do with taking a stand against something that is wrong. I'm not a sheeple.

if the questions bother you that much you can ignore those questions and only answer the ones that aren't about race

You're required to answer all questions if you get the long form, and you also sign a declaration that they are truthful.

Though I would still answer them because it gives the government some idea of who is being represented and how the economy is doing.

They already have this information - they take enough off my paycheck, I'm on the permanent voter's registration list, I have a drivers' license, and like all Canadians, I also have a medicare card. If they're making economic decisions today based on census data collected several years ago, rather than the latest info, we're all fucked, thank you very much.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[psychicsword]

This may be a crazy question but how does one questionair a year relate to a web cam in a bathroom? This is just like relating donating blood to being shot 12 times. You didn't need to treat my Ideas as complete garbage and my first sentence was meant to be a joke since you hear it so much in the news. Also when I said ignore the questions I meant write down "Uncomfortable question" and then you would be technically being truthful and if they didnt care if you answered any questions over the last 2 years what makes you think they will care about a few missing ones this year.

Re:Census? Just count me out.

[trolltalk.com]

It's not a joking matter when refusal to answer more than 50 questions leaves you looking at threats of $500 x50 in fines, plus 3 months in jail x 50, as stated here. ($500 per question falsely answered +/or 3 months jail). This is the 5-year federal census, btw.

is, for every refusal or neglect, or false answer or deception, guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to both. 1970-71-72, c. 15, s. 29.

Since I've refused to answer the long form twice, I'm looking at a total of over $50,000.00 in fines and jail time of up to 25 years.

I told them quite bluntly, after receiving both verbal and written notices that it's an offense with possible fines and jail time, that I'm quite ready to argue my side in court, but I refuse, as a matter of principle, to give in. The whole slippery-slope argument applies here.

And yes, they HAVE fined others, and made an example of them in the media, so its not a completely idle threat. They don't want the general public to know that they can "get away" with refusing to answer, since more and more people would then not cooperate.

That's only $100 a head

[davidwr]

Still, it's probably less than the cost of fixing it and almost certainly less risky. I mean, we are on a deadline folks.

Hopefully by 2020 they'll have 2013 technology well-tested.

It's all borrowed anyway...

[bstarrfield]

Just another example of the mind boggling inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current American administration. $3 billion dollars would cover roughly a week of expenses in Iraq - so the sum must be inconsequential.

Or - $3 billion dollars could pay for the college tuition of thousands of students, could dramatically raise NSF funding, or could help rebuild our roads. Don't these people even shame anymore?

One of the fun points about this is that the current Administration was elected (partially) on their supposed business expertise. Which appears to be actually true as many major businesses flub their own large scale IT projects.

Well - given that we're running a fantastic deficit, we'll just throw the extra costs of the the census project into our staggering debt.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

One of the fun points about this is that the current Administration was elected (partially) on their supposed business expertise. Which appears to be actually true as many major businesses flub their own large scale IT projects.

First, TFA says $2.2 billion to $3 billion. Second, TFA says only some of those costs are associated with the handhelds vs. paper issue; the rest is due to increases in other costs (mainly gas and postage). Third, the original contract was for $595 million for devlopment. It is unclear how much of that was spent. They seem to have cancelled the project because they didn't believe the vendor would deliver. The extra funds are primarilly required to hire more people, pay for their workspace, and print the paper.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Midnight Thunder]

Just another example of the mind boggling inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current American administration

As much as don't appreciate this current administration, I wouldn't put all the blame on them. I blame this on government an bureaucracy. Why this turned out to be so complicated in implement, beyond the changing requirement is hard to tell, then again if the range of changing requirements we that big, then this is certainly evidence of bad planning.

In Canada our census forms are available both online and in paper form. With a portable version you would simply need a handheld that could support a suitable resolution for web input and wireless technology to upload the results. Sounds someone made things more complicated than they needed to be.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[schwit1]

"Just another example of the mind boggling inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current American administration."

Congress is as much involved in this program as Bush. The problem is that the federal government is too big, too incompetent, too focused on self-interest, and too focused on the next election cycle.

We need a revolution that gives all power back to the states and then they decide what to give a federal entity.

The founding fathers had it right in the beginning.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Serge_Tomiko]

Umm, are you talking about the Articles of Confederation?

That didn't go over so well, as I recall. There is reason the constitution was ratified.

Anyway, good luck calling for a new constitutional convention!

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Adambomb]

Its pretty easy to put the blame on them when the Clinton administration presided over the most consistent period of economic growth than the entire 35 years prior.

Of course a good chunk of that was lost to the bubble collapse, and a good chunk of the gain was actually spurred by events in the Bush-Sr era, but thats still why its pretty easy heh.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about oil!

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[KGIII]

The sad reality is that this waste is much less than some other, greater, failings. A quick search showed quite a few though this might be one of the larger ones to hit the news recently. Let's not take into account the losses from the current administration's policy of spending money in areas with no chance of recovering their investment. *sighs* I am probably preaching to the choir anyhow but I figured I'd share my thoughts. I love the ideas of a handheld being used for projects such as this but I fail to see the benefit of the census at all - or at least in the current form. We already keep death and birth records, we already collect tax information and welfare information, we already have driving information... Seems to me we could just compile this information and have results that are as good (if not better) than manual counting...

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[d3ac0n]

*rolleyes*

Just take your BDS and shove it. If you even bothered to RTFA, (or even think outside your BDS box for a SECOND) you would see that the Census is being run by The Census Bureau. NOT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION! The waste was due to:

"significant miscommunication concerning technical requirements between the Census Bureau and Harris"

Why between them? Because:

In 2006, the Census Bureau awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers that enumerators would use to collect data from Americans who did not send in their census forms.

The Census Bureau is a governmental agency OUTSIDE the influence of this, or any other, administration. The only influence any administration would have is in appointing the Director of the Census (U.S. Code, Title 13, Chapter 1 Subchapter 2, subsection 21).
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+13USC21

Now, both the current and previous Census Bureau Directors were appointed by George W. Bush, and approved UNANIMOUSLY by The Senate. (Previous being Louis Kincannon, and current being Steve H. Murdock) So, in that sense, they are connected to the Administration, and like all Government agencies, they are answerable to the President.

However, this does NOT mean that GBW had ANY direct impact on this project. In fact, this was a contract negotiated solely between the Census Bureau and Harris Corp. Congress only stepped in when delays and cost overruns had become out of control, and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez (also a Bush appointee) brought the matter before the House Appropriations Committee. They assigned an independent panel (Headed up by REPUBLICAN Dennis Hastert) to look into the matter. The Independent panel decided that it would be better to just go back to doing things the old way rather than CONTINUE TO WASTE TAXPAYER'S MONEY messing around with the hand-helds.

So really, this was just the system working the way it should, and excising waste. The supposed "3 billion lost" is nothing more than a phantom figure that takes the supposed savings by using an electronic method, and counting them as a loss against using the old method. Nowhere is it calculated how much money it would cost to deal with the delays and problems with a faulty and buggy system that had never been deployed on such a wide scale before. I'd imagine that it would cost MUCH more.

Oh, and about that "3 billion"? Check the quote at the end:

Gutierrez plans to tell the subcommittee that the bureau could transfer funds "from existing departmental resources that will fully cover the resources required for the 2010 census.

So in the end, this will cost the taxpayer exactly 0 extra dollars. So much for the Eeevil Bush Administration stealing taxpayer money.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know where they can recoup some of this...

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[KermodeBear]

I highly doubt that the Bush administration had anything to do with dictating what technology the census bureau uses to do its job.

You may hate Bush, and that's fine, but blaming him for everything that you don't like is really quite silly. This is nothing more than 'Government Waste As Usual'.

Government - no matter who is in charge - is wasteful and inefficient, which is one of the reasons why it should be as small as possible.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[llefler]

...you would see that the Census is being run by The Census Bureau. NOT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

Not to be pedantic, but the Census Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce. And the Commerce Secretary is a cabinet position in the Bush Administration. So in effect, the person with the ultimate decision making authority over the Census Bureau is a Bush appointee.

Although from this article, it smells a whole lot more like a silver bullet project with feature creep. It sounds like a whole 'we can go paperless' crusade rather than simply implementing handhelds for the canvassers.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[dens]

True, then again, the Clinton administration didn't start any wars, which is the biggest money pit; was under Reagan, Bush Sr. and is ever more expensive under Bush 43 now.

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[Adambomb]

right....which had nothing to do with what i said =)

Re:It's all borrowed anyway...

[dens]

Well, we were discussing government waste and how and which administrations spend tax payers' money. Those administrations spent most of our money (most of our netional debt) on wars. Sadly, this census waste is barely a drop in an ever growing bucket by comparison.

$10/person ?!?

[vijayiyer]

It costs $10 _per person_ to count us? That's unbelievable. Perhaps if they just count people (as the Constitution requires) rather than gather race and demographic information, they could cut their costs.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[trooper9]

It costs $10 _per person_ to count us? That's unbelievable. Perhaps if they just count people (as the Constitution requires) rather than gather race and demographic information, they could cut their costs. If they did that, there wouldn't be enough information to allow groups to claim "victim" status for whatever social variable they perceive that sets them apart. Remember, the census does more than count, it helps us cordon-off certain groups on our Level Playing Field.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[eln]

I bet if they just gave everyone $5 as an incentive to self report, you could get more accurate results at half the cost.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[sakdoctor]

Yes, I like the sound of that system. Of course, I wouldn't self-report for $5 just as I won't use a supermarket loyalty card for 5000 "points", but you'd get 99% i'm sure.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Digi-John]

trooper9, that was a highly insensitive comment. Please report immediately to your nearest Sensitivity Reeducation Camp for a programming adjustment.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us assume counting single people at 4 people in per hour. That is 15 minutes to find a house, introduce oneself (verifying you are a census worker,) conduct the interview (verify their identity, their income, race, yadda-yadda,) bid a fond farewell (thank you doing you civic duty) and check off the list (one down, 31 to go.) Through in some random minutes in their for traffic, red lights and getting lost. I think 4 per hour is pretty good estimate, so $40 per hour. To bad the census taker does not get all that per hour. Maybe $20/hour? Factor in gas, mileage, weekly meetings, filing back at the home base and materials and I think $10 a head is not that bad.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Ahnteis]

I'd self-report for $5. In fact, I'd self-report multiple times!

Re:$10/person ?!?

[EricWright]

I think you missed the point. The $3B ($10/person) was just for the handheld computers. The actual cost is likely far greater (paying the census takers, printing forms, etc.)

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Tridus]

But why is most of that necessary?

If you simply mailed every household a short form with the questions that they could return with free postage, you'd get most of the same people counted, at far less cost.

Actually having people go door to door to do this seems pretty archaic.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Unordained]

No. The cost is increasing by $3 billion (with a b). From the article:

Gutierrez said reverting to a paper-based census, in addition to other costs not associated with the handhelds, is expected to increase the cost of the 2010 census to between $2.2 billion and $3 billion through fiscal year 2013. That would bring the total cost of the 2010 census to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion. He said the bureau would need an increase of $160 million to $230 million for fiscal 2008 to cover costs associated with returning to paper, with an additional $600 million to $700 million for fiscal 2009. Gutierrez added that the majority of the cost increases would occur in 2010

So it actually costs somewhere around $37/person to count and classify each of us, or around 7 hours of minimum-wage labor. It's far worse than you think.

Also, the handhelds were for field operatives collecting data from people who didn't send in their forms -- the cost estimate above includes the distribution and processing of paper forms that you fill out yourself, which you could reasonably expect to be cheaper than going door-to-door collecting data, thus increasing the per-person cost of personal data collection.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

The current administration is already giving everyone $600. What's another $5 to self report for census information? Too bad someone couldn't figure out how to combine the yearly information that we already report to the IRS into something the census bureau could use. That would be far too streamlined, wouldn't it?

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Jthon]

They already just send out a form in most cases. The problem is that people don't return them so they have to go door to door to fill in the gaps.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people don't return the form. Did you read the article where it said that it was a follow-up for people that haven't filled out the form?

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Prof.Phreak]

So it actually costs somewhere around $37/person to count and classify each of us... ...well, without counting us all, we can't be sure how much it costs per person :-)

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

At close to $40 a head you'd think that the Census Bureau could send someone out to buy each of us lunch and do personal interviews with everyone.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[porcupine8]

... Spoken by someone who has obviously never tried to do research via surveys. A return rate of over 50% is pretty hard to get. Heck, I once gave out a survey to kids in classrooms, a captive audience, and some of them didn't fill out the whole thing.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[pla]

But why is most of that necessary? If you simply mailed every household a short form with the questions that they could return with free postage, you'd get most of the same people counted, at far less cost.

If they just asked "number of occupants", that would work. Some people might still miss it, but the vast majority of people would fill it out and return it.

Instead, they ask a few dozen annyingly personal questions (and that does describe the short form - Some "lucky" percentage of people get a 20 page questionaire sufficient to write a goddamned biography of the respondant), and act surprised and annoyed that they get a low response rate.

So, people make a sort of game of avoiding (or outright lying on) the census, and as a result, we have extremely detailed but wildly unrepresentative data about everyone (extrapolated) in the country - Basically, they multiply a million Ned Flanders by 300, and call that "The Census".

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do that, you'd probably find we were more populous than China.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[DrWho520]

They go door to door to interview those people who have either a) not filled out the form correctly or b) not sent the form in at all. So please, everyone, take some time this census to do a good job and turn in your form. It could save a great deal of money.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[lansirill]

The cost comes from non-respondents. If you return your form you're cheap to count. If someone has to call you 3 ti es and knock on your door twice, you can get awfully expensive to count. The paper and postage is relatively cheap (although 300 million letters are of course expensive in an absolute sEnse) This is why reminder letters are sent out. It's much cheaper to try to contact you by mail than it is to visit you in person.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[lansirill]

This would almost certainly invite fraud, as well as introduce additional error into the count. There are fines for not responding but they are either not used or rarely used.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Fri13]

prepair for next time to five finger prints, blood and DNA sample and iris image with your palm print (bloodlines) and your image what has taken from 5 different angle. That's why it's 10 dollar per person.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[lansirill]

1) Response is required by law. The Census Bureau has a responsiblity to collect a complete count.

2) This would introduce additional non-response bias into any estimates based on these data unless respondents and non-respondents were fairly similar.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because about 1 in 3 people do not return the paper form on their own. People are lazy, busy, reluctant, forgetful, whatever. So, there is "non-response follow-up."

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me and the other 1000 people living at this address agree!

Re:$10/person ?!?

[eepok]

To be accurate, they gather that information with the intent of *creating* the level playing-field with the assumption that we are not born with equal circumstances.

Whether or not those numbers are used in the best practices is a completely different matter.

Re:$10/person ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if they just count people (as the Constitution requires) rather than gather race and demographic information, they could cut their costs. Actually, when the Constitution was drafted, it was absolutely essential that the Census collect racial data. You do know about the "three-fifths" clause, right?

Re:$10/person ?!?

[sasha328]

It does look like a lot...

Here in Australia, the census workers (mainly temporary workers, like election monitors) walk around every 5 years and drop off a census form.
The resident will then fill in the form (mainly demographic data), and on a certain day, the forms will be collected or you can post them.

Within a year, the results of the census are available in meaningful forms.

Last census, a year or so ago cost us about $300 million (that's about $15 per person of population) which also includes the year spent processing the raw data.

Rescue the project, get $1 billion?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, seriously. How hard can it possibly be to write this application? We're talking basic data collection and processing at scale, not rocket science.

what was wrong with laptops?

[superid]

There's got to be more to this story. FTA the original contract was $595M for 525K handhelds that were supposed to replace "costly" paper forms and maps?

Does each enumerator REALLY use $1k in paper? I call mega-shennanigans.

Hell they could have just bought every enumerator a macbook!

Re:what was wrong with laptops?

[TubeSteak]

There's got to be more to this story. FTA the original contract was $595M for 525K handhelds that were supposed to replace "costly" paper forms and maps?

Does each enumerator REALLY use $1k in paper? I call mega-shennanigans. It's not just the physical cost of paper. Once you add in the cost of shuffling those papers around, doing the data entry, verifying the data entry, etc etc etc... it gets expensive real quick.

There's a lot of bureaucracy in the Federal Government.

Re:what was wrong with laptops?

[blitzkrieg3]

Consider that the same paper can't be reused every ten years, and the same devices can.

Re:what was wrong with laptops?

[cptnapalm]

You are more right than any decent person should ever be.. I work for a library, just a county-sized library system in one of the poorer states and the waste is insane. The program used to check stuff in and out can print out receipts with the due date, but instead "because that is always how we've done it" there are the cards to be stamped which, by a very rough estimate costs the taxpayers about $60000/year. Just to stamp cards.

The people who run the various branches don't actually do anything other than fill out paperwork all day, every day for the centralized bureaucracy who is constantly adding new forms to be filled out, statistics to be manually collected, etc. The timesheet is FOUR pages long and must be turned in one week before the time period ends because it takes the accountants that long to go through them all.

I'd estimate that 1/4th of all library employees (probably me included) are needed just because of all the paperwork that the bureaucracy demands that the full librarians. The full librarians do little more than paperwork. The stuff that keeps the system running are done by the techs and the college kids. And even they have to fill out paperwork.

They skimp on the core of the system, which if you search for books on plumbing will give you the title "Dracula" by Bram Stoker as number one match. They spent tens of thousands on custom printer software and hardware so as to save a couple of thousand dollars worth of paper from overprinting. And the software is buggy and crashes frequently, which then requires the employees to manually find and print the damn thing.

I'm not even going to go into the "thinking" required to insist that each and every one of the hundreds of computers spread all over the place geographically have networking manually configured and other stuff of that sort.

This is just a single library system... what the hell must the Federal bureaucracy be like...

Bureaucracy, public or private, is a creation of the devil...

OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[Reality Master 201]

Stop the waste now!

Just ask the CIA or NSA

[robipilot]

Can't they just ask the CIA or NSA for the census information? I mean, they're already tracking the snot out of us anyway. Hell, they may know how many kids I have better than I do.

Re:Just ask the CIA or NSA

[ricegf]

The information the CIA and NSA collects on us is classified, you doofus. They have to collect it all again so they'll have an unclassified copy.

Duh.

Re:Just ask the CIA or NSA

[techpawn]

Hell, they may know how many kids I have better than I do.

Yes we do. The roast smells great and don't forget to pick up Billy after school.

Just say no to government snoops and spies

[Anonymous Coward]

I politely refuse to answer anything except the count of residents of the household.

This will insure an in-person visit for follow up. Be polite but resolute in your refusal to answer. You can be fined $100. You can be fined $500 for giving false answers.

The US government thinks it can go anywhere and ask anything and snoop and spy on us. I just say "no."

Re:Just say no to government snoops and spies

[thrillseeker]

I just say "no."

That's very brave of you, Anonymous Coward.

What a mess-- INSANE

[avandesande]

That is over 1 million per computer! And they use the term 'develop', does that even include the cost of the compter. Heck, I'll do it for 50,000$ per computer. Insane!

In 2006, the Census Bureau awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers that enumerators would use to collect data from Americans who did not send in their census forms. The handhelds would replace the millions of costly paper forms and maps that enumerators must carry when going door to door to visit Americans who did not mail in their census forms. Since awarding the contract, the project has experienced constant setbacks, including changing system requirements that led to increased costs and missed deadlines. Reports by the Government Accountability Office, the department's inspector general and Mitre Corp. all issued warnings that the handhelds were at risk of not being ready by 2010 and may not work as planned.

Re:What a mess-- INSANE

[bencoder]

That is over 1 million per computer!

In 2006, the Census Bureau awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers

What?

595,000,000 / 525,000 = ~1000

about $1000 per computer is a bit more reasonable wouldnt you say?

Re:What a mess-- INSANE

[ConfusedVorlon]

I may be missing something, but where I come from, 595 million != 525,000 * 1million

I calculate $1000/computer. Still a lot.

Re:What a mess-- INSANE

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

That is over 1 million per computer! And they use the term 'develop', does that even include the cost of the compter. Heck, I'll do it for 50,000$ per computer. Insane!

Actually $595,000,000/525,000 = $1,133.33 per computer. While I, too, would be happy to do the job for $50,000.00 per computer, perhaps a quick refresher on approximations using exponential notation would be time well spent for you. :-)

595*10^6 / 525*10^3 =ish 1.x*10^3

Re:What a mess-- INSANE

[bencoder]

waah... flamebait?

Re:What a mess-- INSANE

[avandesande]

Darn nitpickers! I am only off by 3 orders of magnitude ;)

Can I borrow your calculator? $10/head

[davidwr]

Damn, 3B / 300M is NOT 100 no matter how much I wish it was.

Someone lend me their calculator please.

Woot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the government will utilize Woot.com to recover some of the costs

What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[krygny]

I read TFA. But it's still a mystery to me why things like this are so difficult. Same shit with voting machines. Why can't anyone develop a computerized voting system that exceeds every attribute of all other voting systems (inexpensive, simple, open, secure, reliable, maintainable, anonymous, auditable, etc.)?

Re:What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No task can be accomplished by he who does not wish to.

Just sayin'

The engineering mentality is to solve problems. The political mentality is to create problems to justify long-term programmes posing as solutions. Guess which mentality controls voting and the census?

Re:What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[Vellmont]

Why can't anyone develop a computerized voting system that exceeds every attribute of all other voting systems (inexpensive, simple, open, secure, reliable, maintainable, anonymous, auditable, etc.)?

Because very few people (and no it's not just government) have learned how to write a contract for software development, and the Big Software development companies know this. They get paid no matter if the project fails or not.

The other big failing is getting all the requirements up front and not changing them.

Re:What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[Essron]

rolling out a custom handheld system to a nationwide field operation on behalf of a federal bureaucracy? i would say thats a near impossible project before you even get involved in palace intrigue, government contracting issues, legacy systems/analytics requirements, and unions.

canning this plan will probably save money, not burn it. the savings estimate is probably a lie from the vendor's "forecast" when quoting their risk-free, cost-plus pricing bid. remember how much trouble the FBI has been having upgrading their system?

The hubris of the lone programmer that believes they have a full understanding of an enormous progress is one of the many obstacles which cause projects of this scale to fail.

Re:What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[ricegf]

Exactly. Everything that I've never tried has been easy, too.

Re:What is the #%&kin' problem?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people in charge of the projects typically dont know what they are doing and then have their heads shoved way up their arses.

More than likely 3-6 high level managers kept adding or changing "features" and requirements so much it turned into a mess that failed.

how many fricking projects that worked failed because some idiot executive said, "that's great now make it integrate with our current phone system." which is a old outdated POS that cant be integrated to. the retarted executives desire is not possible so he kills the project.

So it goes. This is how you waste millions and billions on nothing. TO eliminate waste, eliminate management.

Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[dpbsmith]

The part I never understand about stories like this is why it never seems to be possible for the government to sue and recover costs from the contractors who failed.

Are government procuring agents not sophisticated enough to write a binding contract? Or are these contracts really sweetheart deals, in which it's a tacit understanding that Harris gets $595 million as a gift, and in return are not actually expected to deliver anything more than paper proof that they kept themselves really busy?

Why isn't Harris on the hook for the $3 billion in extra costs?

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[twmcneil]

Dude, Read TFA!

The bureau then identified "more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements,"
Now that's some serious feature creep.

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[Mr.Dippy]

You just described Accenture's business model

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[Anonymous Coward]

2 words...

Campaign contributions

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[ricegf]

Great! I'd like for you to develop an application for me. I'll sign a contract to pay you $595,000 for it. But you have to agree that, if I add 400 requirements a year into development, you have to keep the original schedule or else you pay me $3,000,000.

Ready to sign? Hello?

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[devildog820]

I believe the $595 million was the original cost of the project. I wonder how much was already awarded? Having worked for a government contractor, I've always found that the contractors are usually only half to blame. Remember the Raytheon "Smart Solider" equipment that was so terrible? Partially because the military loaded them up with crappy specifications and forced them to use ADA.

Re:Why aren't the vendors ever responsible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually, there's a penalty in the contract if a contractor fails to deliver. In this case the Census Bureau mismanaged it, plain and simple. You can't change requirements repeatedly on a whim (including more than 400 requirement changes AFTER the dry run) and expect a program to come in on time and within budget.

Here's an in-depth analysis of what went wrong with the project: http://www.govexec.com/features/0707-15/0707-15s2.htm

Bzzzt, wrong!

[spun]

Sorry, the reality of the situation is that due to private industry malfeasance, the government will have to do things the same old way, and won't be saving the money they hoped to. So take your loonitarian anti-government attitude and shove it, because once again, it is a corporation that is to blame.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[d3ac0n]

Actually, it is highly likely that it is a bit of both. From the article:

At a March 5 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Gutierrez said, "significant miscommunication concerning technical requirements between the Census Bureau and Harris" were a main reason for the failings.

I think it was a situation of the "Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing". Not an uncommon problem in both corporate AND governmental circles. Having previously worked for a company that dealt with government contracts, I can say without a doubt that it is pretty much par for the course when doing that type of work.

I'm just glad to see that the Independant panel had the good smarts to decide to just scrap it and go back to the old way. I can't imagine how much money would have been wasted trying to implement things as they were. Good-on them.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[azadrozny]

He points to a dress rehearsal held in May 2007 as when "development and scoping problems emerged." The bureau then identified "more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements," he said, which were delivered to Harris on Jan. 16.
It appears that the government shares some of the blame. 400 new/modified requirements tells me they didn't have good idea of what they needed the system to do. A system is only as good as the specification provided.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[ricegf]

Had you RTFA, you would have seen this:

He points to a dress rehearsal held in May 2007 as when "development and scoping problems emerged." The bureau then identified "more than 400 new or clarified technical requirements," he said, which were delivered to Harris on Jan. 16.

Not sure how you get from "the government missed or mis-stated 400 requirements" to "it is a corporation that is to blame", but calling people names doesn't lend credence to your view. It's much more likely that both contractor and Customer have plenty of room for shared blame. (Haven't these guys ever heard of "release early, release often"? From 2006 to May 2007 with no dry runs, just blind faith? What is this, the 1960's?)

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[spun]

Nice try, but where does it say the government screwed up? "400 new or clarified technical requirements" does not mean "the government missed or mis-stated 400 requirements." It could mean, for instance, the government added one new requirement and clarified 399 requirements the contractor had gotten wrong.

But more than likely the gist of what you and the other folks who responded said is correct: both parties probably made mistakes. I'm just tired of this cynical, "The government always screws up and wastes our money but corporations can do no wrong" attitude I see among online libertarian types. It seems like an attitude designed and marketed by some PR firm trying to sell the idea of doing away with government and privatizing everything.

That, and nuance always gets in the way of a good rant.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[Z34107]

Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing... Or, to extend your metaphor, what the feet are doing, and where you are in proverbial traffic.

I've heard that the hardest part of software development isn't writing the code, nor is it debugging, but getting the friggin' specs out of the user/customer!

Not that I'm in that industry yet, but I do statistics work for my college. They'll give me a stack of paper surveys, and say "Can you turn this into a chart? Kthx." Regular paper generally has two axes, and they ask for a 200 question survey to be turned into "a chart."

Eventually, I beat out of them that they're the Associate Dean of the Office of Student Life Special Committee for Acronym Development on Alcoholism and Student Pregancy and want to grind their axe that drunk kids have kids, so you shouldn't get drunk. After you figure out what they're trying to do, you can twist a graph out of the data proving that drunk college students are promiscuous... Shocking, isn't it?

I can definitely see the Census Bureau going all, like, "Dude, we count things. Can you digitize this?" and getting a calculator. "No, we ask people questions and count the answers!" and getting a scantron machine. "No, no, dude, we go to people's houses!" and getting a PDA. "But, that's too complicated. Can you make it simpler?" and getting a pencil.

Luddites, especially government luddites, fail at describing what they want when ordering computers and software. In compsci classes, you'll get a nice assignment like "write a program that, utilizing the O(n log n) sorting algorithms discussed in class, accomplishes X, Y, and Z for Q points." In real life, you'll get "We're the FBI. We install wiretaps and occaisionally fight crime. Can you computerize that?" and end up with a sytem that requires 13 steps to save a file.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[Locutus]

oh for the good old days when managment knew nothing about technology and only knew they didn't know anything about technology. Atleast then, they relied on a geeky type to interface between them, the developers, and the customer. Now, I constantly see management specifying the technology used by the developers to solve problems. That's right, management dictating the technology because they've been to Redmond WA and Microsoft told them what works and what should be used. This isn't really just a Microsoft thing but that is where I see it the most. Shops which tell you they are a Microsoft shop when you try to solve their problems with anybody elses tools.

This part of the 'good ole days' I miss the most. But hey, nobody gets fired for failed projects when they dictate tools everyone else seems to be using. And I doubt anybody will get fired for this failure and Harris will probably still get paid millions and millions in profits for letting this project get out of hand. Again, I've seen these so many times in government projects tied with commercial partners. Kiss ass to keep the project rolling and still get paid when it fails. How sickening.

LoB

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[azadrozny]

And I doubt anybody will get fired for this failure and Harris will probably still get paid millions and millions in profits for letting this project get out of hand. I have spent the last 10 years of my career doing some form of government contracting. I struggle with this question often. What do you do when your customer tells you to do something that you know will not work, or could be done a better way? A responsible manager will attempt to move the customer in the right direction. But what happens when the customer insists it be done their way? You cannot refuse to do the work, you have a legal contract binding you to do it. I do not mean to imply that the contractor is not responsible for what they produce, just highlight the fact that it is rarely a black and white situation.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[telemart73]

I completely agree. However, I manage mobile software deployments for a living and can say that my biggest problem is explaining to users what the purpose of disconnected handhelds really is. It's a complex topic for some workers and PHBs to wrap their heads around, at least in the pharma and nuclear environments I work with.

OTOH, this is a freaking census with a number of sequential, perhaps relational, questions to be asked. It's not an inventory management system. I suspect that the failure is with leadership.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[Locutus]

wow, so you've seen it the other way where the contractor was going down the wrong path on their own without direction and refused to take your advice? I've not seen that once since every contractor I've worked for has been more than happy to do what they are told to do by the government side. There's always been ways to get paid for the work no matter how off base it may be since failure is always an option. Again, because they still get paid.

Maybe documentation on the dangers of the current path up the chain could be used to move the contractor to what you have to prove is the right choice.

LoB

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just tired of this cynical, "The government always screws up and wastes our money but corporations can do no wrong" attitude I see among online libertarian types. I think you added that second part yourself here. Of course, it's a lot easy to shoot down a point when you add an invalid condition yourself. Oughta be a name for that...

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[spun]

The original post claimed that it was the government's fault without mentioning the corporation that was also party to the process. It did not say, "Corporation steals $x million in tax-payer money for first time in history," now did it? No. It laid the blame squarely on the government, thereby excusing the corporation. All I was doing was stating the obvious unspoken subtext. I'd love to see you try to claim that wasn't what was meant. Contortionists are so fun to watch.

So, where's the straw man? What's the invalid condition? There actually weren't any of those things. Nice try, though.

Re:Bzzzt, wrong!

[ricegf]

Nice try, but... the gist of what you and the other folks who responded said is correct

I think I'm superfluous to this argument...

Big Software and it's failings.

[Vellmont]

This sounds like a fairly standard story for Large Software Projects that failed from the article.

There's this belief that software can be developed with a "I want one of those doohickeys that makes my job easier. Give me the Final Product in 2 years" attitude. Then someone goes about trying to figure out what the doohickey is. Sometimes they do it right, other times they don't. Most of the time the people designing the system don't really know what they want.

That's fine, people don't know what they want and they don't always know what works. If you have this situation though, you're just not going to get the Final Product at some future point in time, like you're building a bridge or something. You have to start out small, solve SOME of the problems, and find out what works. It sounds like nobody really did that.

Re:Big Software and it's failings.

[inflamed]

If the contractor can't figure out what is needed, they shouldn't bid on the project. What is so wrong with this system? Oh yeah, no penalty for cost-overruns.

Re:Big Software and it's failings.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the contractor can't figure out what is needed, they shouldn't bid on the project.

It's a design contract. You shouldn't have to do all the work required, just to bid on it.

about $8.50

[dj245]

Thats about $8.50 per person if we guess 350 million people (I haven't been keeping up)

Re:about $8.50

[muellerr1]

Hell, if we guess instead of actually counting then it shouldn't cost anything at all.

twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't shill your own posts to game the moderation system.

Re:OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[Archangel Michael]

We're not at war with Iraq.

So, I wonder who we're at war with.

Good sense

[Spazmania]

It takes a lot of guts and a lot of just plain good sense to look at a failing IT project and say, "This isn't salvageable; dump it instead of throwing good money after bad." Good for them!

Dont fill it out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not in 2000.
Absolutely no consequences.
I will not in 2010, unless the form has only the question required by the constitution.
Or, maybe I'll fill it out wrong, for joke!
This is probably last time we can not fill it out, In 2020 the citizen-protection-drones will simply scan the chip (implanted by the ministry of privacy) that broadcasts all personal and biometric data constantly. This way, all able-bodied citizens can be processed for compulsory military service in the Iraq war. We have always been at war with Iraq.
Also,
Chocolate rations will be increased!

Re:OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[Reality Master 201]

The terrists, don'cha know - Al Qaida or Iran or generic "militants," depending on who you ask. Funny how it never seems to be people who are pissed about the fact that the US is still occupying their country.

Device requirements?

[Ioldanach]

I'm somewhat curious just what the device is intended to do. It strikes me that their needs should be something that could be handled by a java application written for any java-enabled cellphone handset, severing the requirements from the handset itself and allowing separate bids by cellphone manufacturers and network providers for the cellphone and communications portions of the program.

In general, any tri or quad band cellphone with any (even very slow) data access and a real, simulated (touchscreen), or bluetooth keyboard or keyboard like device should be able to be used to fill out the form on the spot and then transmit the form back to a central server. Then, at the end of the day, the census taker reviews the forms they submitted and verifies their accuracy and the forms go into the system. (This step is to prevent fraud by someone attempting to hack the cellphone side of things.)

The whole system is modular, and after specifying the the data interchange format between phone and server, could be bid out separately and cheaply. There's really no need to design a durable device capable of harsh use with data input capabilities, that function is already available in commodity devices!

The system could even track times and gps locations of the data as it was entered, for cross-referencing to verify map locations.

Re:Device requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question I have is how hard would it be to modify/use the UPS handheld things they are always carrying around? You can sign, check boxes, add stuff, upload data. Its really rather slick.

Government Warehouse

[Comboman]

not that there's $3 billion in handhelds sitting in a warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark is in the south wing; the handhelds are in the north wing in between the Roswell saucer and the automobile that runs on water.

Transparency reduces problems.

[gnutoo]

Making as much of the data as possible available will help you and others determine what's up to snuff. The route taken by enumerators will make it easier to tell what's been counted and what has not. GPS data can be held up to any map or satellite imaging and it can be checked on foot by people who have a problem. That kind of information is not verifiable now. Better, more verifiable data is better for everyone.

Re:Transparency reduces problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're far too optimistic about the accuracy that most GPS units provide. It isn't helpful to make a good centerline file or to do parcel mapping. Where do you think a map to overlay the tracks come from? The process varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and focusing on the pretty picture like you seem to do doesn't get it done in a useful way. Also you should know that satellite imaging isn't very good for doing more than fun looks in Google Maps or the like. Low level flights are so much more accurate (when done right) it's not funny.

nothing new here.

[gnutoo]

Hmmm, yes I did provide something useful. It's amazing how people like reading informed opinion and how often people who know what they are talking about recommend free software and transparency. The US census is not incompetent but it can be improved. Improved processes and informed opinion are some of the better things you can get from Slashdot when tools like you don't fill the place up with bullshit.

Re:nothing new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Improved processes and informed opinion are some of the better things you can get from Slashdot when tools like you don't fill the place up with bullshit.

I'm curious, is this what you consider "improved processes" or "bullshit"? What about this? What about this? Maybe this? Ir this. Perhaps this then. There's thousands of them to pick from.

Not all due to paper switch

[deweller]

The $3 billion cost increase is not due to just the switch back to paper.

The $2.2 billion to $3 billion cost increase for the decennial census is due to reverting to a paper-based census as well as other costs that are not associated with the handheld computers.

I know where they can recoup some of this

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008

Typical late changes.

[gnutoo]

It's hard to tell who screwed up here but it looks like the typical IT train wreck. When you follow the links, you find that the field trials produced some 417 new or improved specifications. This means the original request was inadequate or that neither party was able to forsee all of the problems. Government contracting seems to go like this, just look at the mess electronic voting is.

That's too bad because there's a lot of promise in GPS enabled enumeration and electronic voting.

LMAO. The botnet is busted.

[Mactrope]

Broken on IE 6? Ha ha, that just eliminated 75% of the botnet. Now I know what happened to the trolls. Stuffed! Nice work, Slashdot.

More than 80% of Slashdot readers use browsers that understand correct CSS. I suggest you upgrade soon it won't cost you anything.

Botnet operators will have to install new code.

RTFA

[porcupine8]

They spent $600 million on trying to develop the handhelds.

The $3Billion is what the paper alternative will cost now that the handhelds aren't happening.

sudden outbreak of common sense

[plopez]

Basically they did things right.

1) They tested 3 years in advance.

2) When it became apparent they were no where near ready (approx. 400 new requirements) and that with the new reuirements, plus testing and training they would not meet their deadline they pulled the plug.

Now if only the private sector would learn this...

Open Source the design

[Anonymous Coward]

When will government learn? If they want to build a monument they ask for people across America to submit designs and they pick the best one. Cost of the design? A prize and glory.

On computer projects however, they spend $500 million with a consultant that tells them it can't be done.

Have a contest for the best automated design to count millions of people. If there is a winner give them a million bucks, if no one has a good design it didn't cost you anything. The design will be better and the cost less. Everyone wins.

That's Craaaaaaaazy

[mcmonkey]

In 2006, the Census Bureau awarded a $595 million contract to Harris Corp. to develop more than 525,000 handheld computers that enumerators would use to collect data from Americans who did not send in their census forms.

No wonder the project failed. Why not have them develop 1 handheld computer, and produce 525,000 units for enumerators to use?

So this is hell...the government and society from Idiocracy, without the handjobs. Sartre was right.

Re:That's Craaaaaaaazy

[guruevi]

I agree, that would have put the cost at roughly $1000/handheld. I have a Nokia N800 for $250 (and with bulk prices it should even go down further) which I can develop (open source) software for ($125m for a week's worth of programming and a year or 3 of database hosting and support sounds good to me) that could do exactly the same. I just halved your price AND became a very rich man.

Off the shelf!

[JBMcB]

FTA: $595 million for 525,000 custom handheld computers, which is about $1,100 per machine.

OR - 525,000 iPhones with one year corporate plans and Pharos bluetooth GPS - probably around $1,000 per unit MAXIMUM, which leaves about $70 million to develop a custom web app for the census - which should be WAY more than enough.

Not the best example - but C'mon, how much does a custom PDA app cost? It's a GPS combined with a questionnaire app - for $1,100 a pop!?!?

Re:OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[Archangel Michael]

Most of the people being killed in Iraq as insurgents aren't Iraqis, which makes them not "insurgents" but rather "terrorists". The Iraqis hate them more than they hate us right now.

AND, we shouldn't have invaded, but we're there now, so we have to stay until it is stable enough for us to leave.

WHICH is why I suggest we pull our troops home from everywhere else, and from Iraq as soon as it is stable without us.

I also suggest that if IRAQ wants us there, they should be paying us in OIL to stay, or else we should leave. I'm sick of paying for other people who can't seem to get along (Sunni and Shiite) (Catholics and Protestants) (Cats and Dogs).

Where can I get one of those things?

[Bushido Hacks]

Does anyone know of a website where Uncle Sam sells or auctions off the stuff they don't use anymore? Is there like an eBay-like website or government auction place to get stuff from the US Government?

Real ID is all we need

[origamy]

Isn't the "Real ID" a solution for Census? Everybody hates it because of the increased database meshing, but since everybody *has* to switch to RealID each state will already know everything about everybody... So, the Census seems unnecessary.

Note that I do not agree or disagree with the Real ID and I do not want to start a Real ID comment flame here. I would like to see a unified ID system in America, where all the IDs are least looked standardized; but I can see how a unified database could help and could be a problem at the same time.

But sometimes it has to be tracked...

[Chmcginn]

Let's take an extreme example : racially (or any other type of bigotry) inspired violence. If you put blinders on the government to the point where agents aren't allowed to identify race, much of the violence against the civil rights movement would be without context.

As for collecting it in a census, it's a bit more of a stretch...

How hard can it be?

[dat cwazy wabbit]

Even starting from scratch, they have over a year to develop the system, which really shouldn't be all that complicated. Also, why not just do it in 2011 or 2012 if the system isn't ready in 2010?

Re:How hard can it be?

[BBandCMKRNL]

Also, why not just do it in 2011 or 2012 if the system isn't ready in 2010? Because the U.S. Constitution requires it to be done in 2010.

Isn't it required reading in school anymore?

I happen to agree

[Byzandula]

These new-fangled computer machines have no place in our Government system. How can we trust a machine to do the work of a man? Sure they may be more efficient, not need coffee breaks, and do math pretty well, but we have BLOOD! Have we all not seen 2001: A Space Odyssy? C'mon people!

--I'll take my sig with a glass of single malt

No, really, I wouldn't.

[Chmcginn]

At close to $40 a head you'd think that the Census Bureau could send someone out to buy each of us lunch and do personal interviews with everyone.

Now, I'm not entirely defending the $40 a head figure, it is kind of high. But considering there is a constitutional obligation to try to count everyone, the people who won't return the form (or answer the door, or the phone) are what costs so much. Three or four trips to a particular house (even by someone making minimum wage and driving a government vehicle) starts to add up. Those people, and those who would try to fill out multiple forms, are the reason it can't be done just by mail.

The simple solution - an ammendment to the Constitution, making the census a purely voluntary thing. Too lazy to fill out the 'number of people living in your house & yearly household income' sheet? Then your state loses representatives & federal money.

Re:No, really, I wouldn't.

[Rich0]

How about this - send each mailing address a form with 1 question - how many people live at this address. It goes on a postcard-sized business reply card that you just drop in a mailbox.

Why do we need a huge questionaire to determine congressional representation?

Or better still, why not just ask a credit reporting agency how many people there are at what address - they probably know what house I'm going to buy next better than I do!

Re:OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[coyotl]

Help us, Al Gore! You are our only hope!

the argument from last census

[Anonymous Coward]

Counting actual people screws over states with lots of illegal immigration, since funds for public services are based on census counts, but the states actually have many more people to support. e.g. hospitals

Statistical counting is also vastly cheaper.

http://www.stat.yale.edu/~pollard/233.fall99/insight.html

Re:OMG! That's 3 days of Iraq war spending!

[Reality Master 201]

At least it wouldn't be George W. Bush and his merry band of war criminals.

Census-taking, electronic voting ... what gives?

[ScrewMaster]

It is impossible for our government to actually count anything anymore?

Unbelievable.

I call bullshit

[Overzeetop]

This isn't magic - we just had a census 7 years ago, and it was all entered into a database. It seems that the baseline system was already specified. You've got a paper and pencil interface - the existing forms - which need to be filled out electronically. You have an existing database which needs to be populated for this go round, so you have your back end interface target.

By my count, that leaves the GUI to be written, the local (temporary) database, and the interface to the main system to write. Ideally, there should be an extensibility to add fields and space in the gui to accommodate those additional fields.

Clearly there is a lot of work between the existing conditions and final product, but often the most difficult part is defining such points. One would hope that there isn't some contractor modifying the main database for 2010, making for a moving target (that's the owners fault, of course).

A contract to *develop* them?

[argent]

I've had a handheld computer since 2000, and that was already fourth or fifth generation. Symbol makes ruggedized handhelds running both PalmOS and WinCE that are already widely used by people doing basically the same kind of thing the census takers are... walking up to the door and running through a checklist. This isn't new technology, this is stuff that's already been out for years.

The concept of race is bullshit

[aepervius]

How do you define a race ? By his amount of melanin in his skin + a few facial feature/eye+hair pigment ? Well good luck on that. Without even counting variation due to solar exposure (called browning), you will find out that from the extrem with very high concentration of melanin and the lower bound where it is neigh absent, there are NO clear limit, only a continuous spectra. Where do you place the bound ? At which point you would say somebody is a "white" and somebody not ? Would the next person do the same ? Some people considered white around here would not be in south Georgia.

And even if you decided on such limit on a national level for census purpose or whatnot. Nowadays, why even keep an outdated concept which was made up from bullshit, and do not even bring anything interresting up ? What USEFULLNESS do you ahve to categorize people in race if tehre are no superiority or inferiority or any difference whatsoever ? And if there is a SINGLE difference, then there is no equality.

And those two points is why I say the concept of race is flawed.

Mature Census Technology :P

[LaminatorX]

Perhaps IBM has some of Mr. Hollerith's punch-card machines in a basement in Armonk. A little clean/lube/adjust and we'd be good to go.

The concept of race is polarizing

[Discoflamingo13]

Just because race is subjectively defined and culturally constructed doesn't make it "bullshit", it just makes it unscientific. There are lots of useful concepts in the world which are unquantifiable and unscientific - aesthetics and ethics are two examples.

In the United States, there was a time in which it was legal to own slaves. The descendants of slave-owners have wealth and social status that was earned by the labor of those slaves - that comes about in the form of privilege. The descendants of slaves don't have that privilege. That's an inequity that can not be correctly measured objectively, no matter what methods you choose. If you want to try to measure it and correct it, then you will upset a lot of people, because they will all disagree about your method of measuring how the construction of race has affected American society. If you ignore that race exists, and that its cultural impact has had socioeconomic effects, then you will upset a lot of people.

There is no natural state of equality between people - it's a state we seek to enforce on our world. It is dangerous to ignore race as a component of inequality between people, as a creator of privileged classes within societies. If you honestly believe that race has no effect on where people grow up, what schools they attend, the quality of their education, and the jobs they can get, you are extremely deluded.