Census Bureau To Scrap Handhelds — Cost $3 Billion 264
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."
Re:Surplus (Score:5, Informative)
From the Article -
Re:Bzzzt, wrong! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:What a mess-- INSANE (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Census? Just count me out. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surplus (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$10/person ?!? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Census? Just count me out. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surplus (Score:2, Informative)
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.