Census counts on pencils, not computers
If you have a spare abacus or slide rule hanging around, you might send it to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The feds are gearing up for the 2010 census, and they can’t seem to get the hang of those newfangled things called computers.
On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who oversees the Census Bureau, had to make an embarrassing announcement to a congressional subcommittee.
The 2010 census, the one that’s going to cost $14 billion and was supposed to be the most sophisticated ever, will not be conducted by workers gathering data on fancy hand-held computers. Instead, the workers will be using simpler tools:
Pencil and paper.
That’s right. After spending $600 million on the computer system, the feds have decided the little gadgets were too complicated for census workers to use (obviously they should have hired teenagers) and weren’t powerful enough to handle the volume of data required (yet I can download a TV show to my cell phone?).
UPDATE: Mea culpa! I discovered Eideard published the same story a few days ago. Guess these new fangled computer thingies are too complicated for me, too!
Haven’t you posted this already?
Sumtin be fishy. Blame the workers?? Haw, haw==sure.
I smell Halliburton somewhere deep.
I was skiing a few weeks ago. Some resort employees going around surveying people to see what they liked about the resort.
I took the survey – they were using what appeared to be 5-year-old Palm Pilots to run some fairly simple-to-use survey software. They asked me about 20 multiple-choice questions which the employee entered by tapping the choice with the stylus. Easy.
The Census Bureau has to use many 100s of thousands of volunteers/part-timers to collect the data. Given such a large group of “employees”, at least 50% will be below average intelligence. In the case of people who are willing to be census volunteers, I’d put that number at probably 80% or more.
My guess is that the Census Bureau knows it would have to train these morons. And I expect the training would have cost them much more than the software and computers themselves.
At least with the old fashioned method, once the employee has figured out which end of the purple crayon works, they can start work.
The issue has nothing to do with computers being too complicated.
The “unspoken” problem is the safety of the census takers. They will be sent into very unsavory sections of cities to question a large number of thugs, ex-cons, gang members and illegal aliens.
You don’t walk around dangerous strange areas flashing an expensive customized computer.
Pencils are cheap.
It’s just Bush’s “Every Census Taker Left Behind” program !!! Leaves more money for his “Office of Faith-Based Stealing” !!!
As someone who has implemented a mobile handheld application within a company, there are always delays due to weeding out the lemon units, vaporware promises and software bugs and the company looks at its investment and says damn the torpedoes and it usually works out. The Census Bureau’s implementation numbers are mind-boggling and they have a specific deadline to meet. Its not the frontline people, its not the technology, its management covering their butt with the safe bet.
This reminds me of the e-voting fiasco. Just because computers can be applied to a situation doesn’t mean they need to be.
Pencil and paper should be just fine, and yield just as accurate, if not more, results.
Everybody needs to search for the term “how to build a nuclear bomb” at least once every day for the next year.
A few months of that and these losers will give up on all this BS.
The only problem with “E” anything is when it touches government. It’d work a lot smoother if those in charge take a back seat to those who know what they’re looking at and get their corruption out of it. When it comes to government all they worry about is who get’s the contract and get’s paid to do it or provide the equipment not weather or not it actually works.
Hey, hey, hey now, we try to extrapolate our value with big words and requirements in our requests on contracts. It makes us seem important to ourselves and well, thats what its all about don’t you know.
Plus now we all get $6k+ computers, (Celerons rock!) full of the latest technology that allows us to do some email and write reports that get printed. $6k may seem like a lot but its not like we will be counting anyone with them so we were able to cut corners and get them cheap, I remember when computers used to cost tens of thousands of dollars and take up a whole closet. We are getting a deal on these new Celerons!
I’m thinking of going with the extra RAM option for a total of 512MB, more than enough and a great deal for only $500 more per computer. I hear solitaire is multi-player now I wonder how that works, oh well we will have time to figure it out now.
Now where is my pencil? I need to get back to work.
I know a former (and probably future) Census supervisor. I do the occasional tech support for her.
The unfortunate answer is yes.
How ironic since the IBM card was developed in part to deal with tabulating the 1910 census!
The followup news reports are still fairly incomplete, but it seems the bureau is blaming the contractor (Harris) and Harris says the bureau kept changing the requirements and specifications.
My guess is that both of these are correct.
Is this for the idiots that don’t fill out the mailer? I got three of those, the last having a death threat letter attached to it if I didn’t return it filled out. I tossed it in the trash as well. What a bunch of crap, page after page of stupid questions. So I get a note left on my door from a census worker doing a physical, then another note telling me to call for an appointment then on a Saturday I get some pounding on the door and looking through the peep hole I see a census worker with a local sheriff! What the hell maybe they should do this with all the drunk drivers and perverts in the city. I wonder when homeland insecurity will show up?
Definitely something fishy. We had a census in Colombia recently, and it was performed with pocket pc PDAs. There were no major problems (other than people saying it couldn’t be done), data were quickly collected and published. Don’t tell me it can be done in the States.
Meant “don’t tell me it can’t be done…” in the previous post. Sorry.
The problem was that the bureau decided to build their own computer systems rather than use off-the-shelf technology. And of course they created a huge wants (versus needs) list, changed the specs a few times, and awarded the contract to the lowest bidder.
As mentioned above, Columbia just used off-the-shelf PDA’s with proven technology. A fraction of the cost, stable, and workable. And when the census is over, they can wipe the memory and sell the PDAs to help recover some of the expense.
“The problem was that the bureau decided to build their own computer systems rather than use off-the-shelf technology”
I work for the feds and this is a constant problem. For some reason the people in charge do not seem to understand most software off the shelf will work for our uses. I have seen them buy custom software for $50,000 that does less them MS office. We recently got custom PDA.s that cost between 12 and 15 thousand dollers they actually do less then off the shelf models. And the damn spell checker dont work either.
its because the people that care about the census are the same people who vote – you know, old people (who also happen to have an issue learning how to use computers)
stylus & touchpad > pencil & paper