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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.
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.
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 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.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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.
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
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I think they simply should have contracted with Mosaic Inc. Who already has the systems and people in place to handle the census.
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
You just described Accenture's business model
-Dipster
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.
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.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
:x
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.
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+
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
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Ron Paul, is that you?
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.
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?
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.
Kevin Smith on Prince
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.
Kevin Smith on Prince