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Census Breakdown: The Full Story
 By Tom Shoop | Friday, April 04, 2008  |  09:01 AM

By now I hope you've had a chance to see the story, broken by our sister site Nextgov.com yesterday, on the Census Bureau's decision to dramatically scale back its plans to use handheld computers to conduct the 2010 census. That was followed by a report on the grilling Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez took at the hands of a House Appropriations subcommittee about the move.

In case you didn't see this coming, I would point you to some of the work that Allan Holmes and the members of the team he has assembled at Nextgov have done on this issue over the past several months.

Allan got the ball rolling last summer with a "On the Brink," a piece in Government Executive that noted that the Census Bureau's leap of faith with handhelds "sends shivers down the spines of risk management experts."

Since then he, Gautham Nagesh and Jill Aitoro have followed up with a series of stories leading up to yesterday's blockbuster:



Comments


I believe the census is held evey 10 years or am I mistaken? You mean to tell me in that amout of time they were unable to figure it out?? It took less time to develop the JTF. This is what's so common in gov, Nothing

dan ketter  | Monday, April 07, 2008 |  11:49 AM


Right on. Maybe they should have GovExec put on EPLS for a week :).

Dave C  | Monday, April 07, 2008 |  10:51 AM


I fully agree with DT's comments - Government Executive magazine was TOTALLY responsible for the problems at the Census Bureau. GovExec reporters forced the Bureau to take a high risk IT approach without a prior comprehensive risk assessment, to proceed despite having the requisite management or contracting experience, to not take the basic simulation and modeling necessary to define throughput needs, to underestimate the human interface issues of using hand-helds by senior citizen census takers, created the organization's risk arrogant culture, encouraged the miscommunication of requirements to the contractor, and on and on. Yup, it is ALL GovExec's fault.

In fact, GovExec (and all other media) should be forever banned from reporting on decisions made by politicians or civil servants, lest the whole US government collapse as a result.

BC  | Saturday, April 05, 2008 |  09:16 AM


So, Tom, do you consider Alan and crew's work successful since it perhaps contributed to the disbanding of the struggling project, or were their efforts themselves a failure since everyone jumped ship, leaving the project never to be viable (at least for the next decennial run)?

DT  | Friday, April 04, 2008 |  04:10 PM


When I first read about the use of handhelds, I just shook my head in amazement. They might as well have gone out and bought a bunch of etch-a-sketches to use, for all the pain that was going to come their way!

iggy  | Friday, April 04, 2008 |  01:36 PM



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Government Executive Editor Tom Shoop takes a look at news and events affecting the federal bureaucracy, from the perspective of a longtime observer of government.

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