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Census Bureau To Scrap Handhelds — Cost $3 Billion

Posted by kdawson on from the one-two-three-many dept.

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."

8 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Surplus by Gat0r30y · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
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  2. Re:Bzzzt, wrong! by d3ac0n · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.
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  3. Re:What a mess-- INSANE by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

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  4. Re:Census? Just count me out. by GregPK · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  5. Re:Surplus by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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  6. Re:$10/person ?!? by Unordained · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.
  7. Re:Census? Just count me out. by Random+Destruction · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.
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  8. Re:Surplus by AnomaliesAndrew · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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