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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."
Will they sell the hand-helds? Or give them away like Cheese in the 80's?
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
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.
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 $1k in paper? I call mega-shennanigans.
Hell they could have just bought every enumerator a macbook!
Stop the waste now!
Can't they just ask the CIA or NSA for the census information? I mean, they're already tracking the snot out of us anyway. Hell, they may know how many kids I have better than I do.
I absolutely agree. I chose to keep the old comment system because i like it. It's functional, it's simple, I liked the design, and it was easy for me to read. I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to take those people who chose not to use the new discussion system and upgrade them anyway.
That is over 1 million per computer! And they use the term 'develop', does that even include the cost of the compter. Heck, I'll do it for 50,000$ 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.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Damn, 3B / 300M is NOT 100 no matter how much I wish it was.
Someone lend me their calculator please.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.)?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
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?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
AccountKiller
Thats about $8.50 per person if we guess 350 million people (I haven't been keeping up)
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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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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.
Had you RTFA, you would have seen this:
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?)
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.
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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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We're not at war with Iraq.
So, I wonder who we're at war with.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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!
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
I just say "no."
That's very brave of you, Anonymous Coward.
Just whipped this up this morning: Comment Tweaks
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.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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.
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
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The $3Billion is what the paper alternative will cost now that the handhelds aren't happening.
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i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
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...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
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!?!?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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.
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).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
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.
As for collecting it in a census, it's a bit more of a stretch...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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?
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!
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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.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
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.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
At least it wouldn't be George W. Bush and his merry band of war criminals.
It is impossible for our government to actually count anything anymore?
Unbelievable.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
I think I'm superfluous to this argument...
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.
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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.
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
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.