Conducting a national head count isn't easy or cheap. It gets even more complicated -- and expensive -- when efforts to modernize the decennial census fall short.
The idea for 2010 was that half a million census workers, for the first time, would use handheld computers to verify addresses, follow up with people who didn't return their questionnaires and perform other tasks.
"It would enable them to enter answers from the household as they stood there, and to send that information either immediately or overnight back directly to the processing center," said Louis Kincannon, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
But certain "delete" operations malfunctioned, causing some major glitches. And after the successful completion of the address verification phase, the devices were phased out for any further use. The total cost, meanwhile, grew from an original $600 million computer contract to up to $3 billion.
Add to that the $14.7 billion bill that taxpayers are already footing for the 10 years of census counting -- a price tag that supports 500 local offices and a peak staff of 1.4 million workers. |