gibson042

Geisrud

Do I read right, that $150 million would get all the units outfitted with UPS/FedEx type tracking? Wasn't the cost of the handheld program $1.3 Billion?

The USPS needs the tracking system anyway, install it on their vehicles, maybe that would cost $1.5 Bil. But, you have killed two birds.

Can't trust the USPS to plot a point on a GPS, but we trust them with a $5000 Plasma? The USPS workers have alot to lose if they don't perform. Plenty of people in line for a good governemnt job.

karnak

Elvisisdead

Any failure of the program really has more to do with the quality of the people being hired to perform the task. Very few if any of my fellow testers had ever used a PDA before. The census bureau essentially expected mostly undereducated tech-illiterate people to manipulate a mini-database, identify the location of homes using computer mapping software, and then upload this information from the PDA to the bureau's computers using a modem.

And if anyone's wondering, we really did get issued those messenger bags.

dusadust

FrankReality

Only Census Bureau employees see PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Any statistics that are released will not be done in any form that can identify an individual. The Census Bureau has NEVER had a breach of this information. Not even during WW2 when congress tried to make them release the names of all Japanese surnames in the Census. It has never happened.

By refusing to answer the questions, you are crippling the government that you loathe. So many parts of the government use this data to aid in decision making. Take a look for yourself about how it is used. [factfinder.census.gov]

Elvisisdead

I refuse to answer any "long form" questions that I do not feel are necessary to the functions of government.

robo

aobjects

You'd need something on par with the UPS/FedEx machines, but with full touch screens to do mapping and GPS capabilities. At $100/each, that's 1.5 mil for hardware ALONE. Figure 4-5 x that just for the handheld hardware. 10 mil right there. Data services for the devices? Infrastructure upgrades? Development costs? Helpdesk? Hardware repair/service? All for a fleet of 150K units being used at the same time, almost 24 hours a day for almost a year? $150 mil sounds about right.

Elvisisdead

Essentially, they don't trust numnut low level folks to update the maps - and that was a huge sticking point when developing a system to electronically map addresses. During the initial talks, QA and the ability to modify the work of others was a big issue.

As of right now, there are a select few who do the mapping. I'd say it's probably less than 200 people do all of it in the entire US, including AK PR and HI, and they're trusted. If they're issuing these to all Census workers, I'd LOVE to know how they are going to ensure quality.

Elvisisdead

This is absolutely ridiculous. Such a waste, really. Roughly $150 million would have purchased enough Palms to arm every census taker with one, and one good Palm programmer could have cooked up the software in a week. Instead they wanted to spend 10 times as much using custom instead of off-the-shelf hardware. Dumb.

weatherman

Digo

SearchX

GOKOR

Papsky

There was long forms for some people, short forms for the rest, it was pretty straightforward that you had this chunk of the map and which addresses you needed to talk to, and turned in the forms at the end of every shift for their magical tabulation.

I'm a huge geek, gadget fiend, and all that, but honestly, there are times when the best way to do something is with a pen and paper. Its just a shame that it took the census bureau sinking $2b into a failed project to figure this out.

ars_workerbee2

belltolls

@digodemais: Smug much? The Census Bureau conducts regular survey operations every day of the year. They collect minor information like the inputs to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). There's an entire trade division that collects the information that feeds stats about the U.S. import/export trades. There's a group that collects info about unreported crimes that balance out and give a better picture of crime in the country. Those are just a very small piece of the huge number of current surveys that are conducted. Sounds like you should come out of your cave and find out what they're doing the other 9 years.

"All this" doesn't exist. What they're doing is called "Non-Response Followup". That's for all the dickweeds that don't respond to the mailing. Previously, that was (and looks like will be) done on paper and then manually data entered, or possibly optically scanned in the Jeffersonville, IN facility. It's time consuming and expensive.

They're leveraging the non-response followup to work on the Master Address File (MAF). How do you think the USPS gets a list of all the addreses in the entire US? For that matter, how does Google get it? The Census sells it to them. So in this case, the tech couldn't exist without the updates done by the Census. Google doesn't just magically Will a database into existence- the point of origin is the Census. Here, they're just adding a GPS point to the data.

The Census needs it to update their statistical sampling models. They have to get every address so that they have a full universe from which to sample. They added GPS to add another data points. I was in the original Field Division meetings that discussed it back around 2000-01. The logic was that if we have people there, we might as well pop a GPS coordinate on it. We could then take that data and map efficient routes for field interviewing, etc.

If I know the poeple that spec'd out the devices (and I do) they wanted a design that could do way too much than they were asking. They were petrified about letting laptops in the field that had windows installed on them for CAPI. They spec'd a dumb device that couldn't be sold, or repurposed by the throngs of idiots that they have to hire to get the job done. When the device is worth more than their total paycheck, they'd have no incentive to bring it back.

Elvisisdead

They're looking for tree fellers and there's only two of us!

strider_mt2k

Papsky

swisfun2000

scarbrtj

Anyway there goes more of our tax money.

v2h5a81

Digo

They already know how to use those!

Adex2491

GOKOR

Original contract price with Harris, 2yrs ago: $600M for 500,000 devices.
Current cost: $1.3B for 151,000 devices.
Current projected costs: $2B for 151,000 devices.

Total original estimated census cost: $11B
Total current estimated census cost: $14B

92BuickLeSabre