Census Tech Makeover Includes Innovation "Oasis"
CWmike writes "The US Census Bureau is in the midst of a tech makeover following criticism of its technology deployments leading up to the 2010 Census, ranging from problems with its payroll processing system to its handhelds. The problems resulted in soaring costs and caustic criticism from lawmakers. The makeover aims to consolidate operations as well as enable the bureau's IT staff to be more creative and inventive. One effort includes establishing a place for its IT staff to generate ideas and test technologies. The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together,' said the agency, in response to written questions from Computerworld about the plans, following Grove's testimony. 'Once the physical space is redesigned, it will serve as an oasis that will inspire Census staff to think creatively at an enterprise level to solve some of the more pertinent issues facing the Bureau,' the agency said. The center 'employs a 'think tank' concept where Census staff can work directly with corporate leaders in technology, key members of other government agencies, and academia.'"
How creative do you expect them to be??
Just because you have a redesign of your interior does not mean that they'll be better enabled to "be more creative". I'd say quality assurance and constant retesting/redesign leading up to the next census will be much more beneficial.
The Census was one of the bigger cuts in the latest round of budgeting. And their job can be done on an iPhone.
And, anyway, techies don't think in think-tanks. They come up with their best stuff when they're ass-deep in alligators and wondering why the swamp was built in the middle of the I/O library.
Looks like an infestation of administratus runamokus.
If this is even necessary? Mail a form, fill it out, send it back, enter it into a database. Obviously not everyone is going to fill it out, so you use some statistics to get close to the true answer. How hard is this? I think this is an example of government budget abuse. Yes I realize it's spelled out in the Constitution, but it doesn't say how the Census is to be collected.
With technology they'll realize how much government paperwork we file on an annual basis and realize that they can datamine more accurate numbers in near real-time instead of sending people door-to-door even ten years. Between tax returns and the nightmare you need to go through to buy a house I really don't see the point.
How come I think that the technology coming out of this place will never see the light of day:
The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together'
Well, one manager folk told me and my manager in a call, when we asked about some features: "We are currently implementing plans to size the effort."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It probably won't actually make the staff more productive, but it is likely an item that some manager can check off and tell his superiors how they are working to improve quality. There's probably a budget item in PorkZilla for it too.
I worked on the 2010 Census as your typical door-to-door person. From the bottom up, it's unorganized. There's reams of paper for each task and work is somewhat uncoordinated. Despite what some may think, the people who worked it were generally capable and intelligent, but the lack of technology and stacks of paperwork were just begging for errors (which occured often). I wouldn't go so far as to say the collection process should be abolished in favor of statistical inference, but it could be done far more efficiently (and cheaply).
50,000 characters used to live here.
So it's the government?
"The problems resulted in soaring costs"
That's weird, I thought the census was $1.6 billion under budget.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/08/2010_census_was_16_billion_und.html
Cut out the PHB's they get in the way of generating ideas and makeing test technologies take along time and BAN golf course meetings as they just lead to sale men selling stuff to bosses who have no clue about IT.
I wonder if they intend the Oasis metaphor to extend out to the desert around it.
Or, to mix metaphors, are they basically saying "Nothing will change around here, but we'll build you an enclosed sandbox to shut you up. SURE we'll listen to ideas."
Operator, give me the number for 911!
They need less innovation and more limitation of scope. The census should only consist of two basic pieces of information: address and the number of residents.
The census has one Constitutionally mandated pupose, right? To count population for apportionment in the House. Anything else is superfluous. I'm not a hardcore "government shouldn't do anything" type; but this is a clearcut case where we really don't need them doing anything more. They shouldn't be collecting race information at all. A non-racist government, by definition, should not mention race in the laws, or collect statistics on it.
US Census came to my school when I was graduating 5 years ago and was recruiting. They were offering developers ~$45k a year to start. That is not going to attract good talent especially when you have to relocate to their MD offices. Cost of living is high too there.
More like mirage!
How about we just fix and then test the Census PDAs we already bought. We had to go back to paper and pencil for the Census because some Goverment contractors couldn't deliver a PDA that took surveys. If the government gets working on the problem RIGHT NOW, maybe we'll get workingPDAs in time for the next census. Oh, here's a tip order new batteries no earlier then a year in advance.
I was a manager in a Census office. The technical desktop support was OK. But they built an in-house system to track all the data input and it never worked, ever.
We ended up, in many cases, putting data into Access DBs which would be downloaded by HO overnight. Complete and utter flustercluck.
I spend hours writing up a report, as did all the managers, detailing everything that went wrong. Funny thing is, the people that had worked the prior Census said it was the same issues. Guess that report wont do much good. :(
Good people though, hard workers and for the most part, did their jobs well.
You're either not watching/reading the news objectively or you're a (D) fanboi. The Republicans are douchebags but so are the Democrats, and the D side gets a pass from everyone but Fox. The fact we can't have an objective discussion of the issues that face the United States is pretty much because of this. If Fox remained supremely biased toward the neocons but everyone else reported the truth, Fox would lose viewers by the million. The simple fact is, people have known since the days of Cronkite that the media in America had a dog in the fight, and therefore were not to be trusted. The immense popularity of Fox News is a reaction to the well-known and well-demonstrated left wing bias of American journalists.
Sure, you could claim reality has a left-wing bias, but reality (politically speaking) is just your perception and therefore it's just your perception that has bias. Reality only has a left-wing bias until someone's ass needs to be kicked. Then it's all the sudden very right wing. The fact is, reality has a reality-based bias and sometimes you need to be a hippy and sometimes you need to flatten cities.
No, it's because the News is no longer independent at any level. Corporations own it all. Fox News is just their bulldog, making the rest of them seem less ridiculously solicitous of plutocratic ideals.
the well-known and well-demonstrated left wing bias of American journalists
Demonstrated by whom? Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Some other dishonest partisan wacko?
There's not a news agency on earth that whines about "Teh Republicans!!!11!!" anywhere remotely near as loudly, around the clock, day in and day out, as Fox whines about "Teh Democrats!!!11!!"
Have you ever watched MSNBC?
On Account of Naked Chick
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/990922