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By John McCormick

The Census Bureau yesterday dropped its plans to have field personnel use handheld computers to collect information from Americans who do not fill out their census forms.

The bureau said its canvassers will instead use pencil and paper in its follow-up data collection efforts.

The move could add as much as $3 billion to the government's cost of preparing for the next nationwide census in 2010, according to the bureau.

In 2006, the Census Bureau signed a contract, valued at just under $600 million, with Harris Corp., a communications and information technology vendor based in Melbourne, Fla., to develop a Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) system, which included the development of infrastructure to support a wireless data collection system, the handheld computers, and a management system for monitoring the progress of the census.

The handheld devices were to be used both in collecting information on people as well as gathering street addresses. However, Census said it did not have the human resources to successfully manage both those efforts to completion.

The plan now is to use the handhelds for address canvassing only.

While progress has been made on the project, including the transferred of Census records from paper to digital form, FDCA has come under increased scrutiny.

Last month, the General Accountability Officer, which monitors government contracts, designated FDCA as a high risk project. In doing so, the GAO made reference to its previous reports that found changes to the project requirements had contributed to cost increases and schedule delays.

Carlos M. Gutierrez, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, gave testimony yesterday before a House subcommittee, in which he said: "We now understand that the problem with the FDCA program was due to a lack of communication between the Census Bureau and the prime contractor for FDCA, and to difficulties the contractor had in developing the full scope of the project within our deadlines. From the beginning, we did not effectively convey to the contractor the complexity of census operations, and the detailed requirements that needed to be fulfilled in order to complete the operations that FDCA covers. Once these detailed requirements were completely delineated, we had serious concerns about rising costs and our ability to complete a successful 2010 Census if we continued developing the FDCA program as planned."

In its defense, Harris said more than 400 requirements had been added to the project since the contract was signed.

"The Field Data Collection Automation (FDCA) program...is a large IT and systems integration program created to fully integrate the multiple automated systems required to efficiently and securely obtain Census data for the 2010 Decennial Census," Harris said in a statement. "We understand that such a significant cultural shift presents organizational challenges to any organization, and Harris is encouraged that automation and the adoption of new technology is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion."

Comments (2)

	1. 05-10-2009 02:22
	In Aug. of last year I applied for census work and was hired and trained as a crew supervisor which in turn required training and supervising 20 other people to use the Harris Handheld Computer (the HHC in Censusspeak) to verify and count addresses.     The only thing that was more of a nightmare than the HHC constantly being unable to function so that I would be unable to transmit assignments to a crew of people eager for work was dealing with imbecilic decisions of managment people at the Census Bureau.     Because Census Bureau management made the decision to start their project several month behind schedule, management wound up pushing everyone, using constant threats of immediate dismissal if the project, which crews were told would take 10 weeks, was not finished in five and a half.     I suspect that managers at the Census Bureau are happy to compromise the quality of the census and abuse temporary employees if it means keeping control of more of the budget money that might have assured better quality results and avoided the lawsuits for alleged undercounting that happened during the 2000 census.    Temporary census workers were repeatedly threatened in writing during training with dismissal if they Registered

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	2. 05-12-2009 08:51
	I have heard of similar complaints from temporary government workers in the past. It seems short term Fed projects are often mismanaged due to the lack of proper quality planning and management. The scope of a project such as this one is often underestimated. Sorry to hear you had less than a satisfactory experience. Registered

Bill Gerneglia

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