High-tech gadget's failure puts 2010 census at risk

WASHINGTON — The 2010 census is already in trouble.

The handheld mobile computers that are supposed to replace the pens and paper long used by census takers aren't working properly, and delays could send the cost from $600 million to as much as $2 billion.

The Census Bureau has done little, if any, planning for what to do if the handhelds can't be made to work. As a result, an important census dress rehearsal this spring has been delayed by a month as the agency looks for backup plans.

"I cannot overemphasize the seriousness of this problem," Census Bureau Director Steve Murdock told a Senate hearing this week.

That same day, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, designated the 2010 census a "high-risk area."

The GAO's designation, which provides guidance for Congress about where the next bureaucratic crisis might lie, was the equivalent of a "Beware of Landslides" sign at the entrance to a treacherous mountain road.

The new handheld devices would collect and manage data more efficiently and economically than legions of census-takers armed with pens and pads.

They were supposed to signal the Census Bureau's arrival into the digital age after more than two centuries of collecting data the old-fashioned way.

They would be used to verify addresses through global-positioning software, collect data from households that did not mail back the census questionnaires and manage a variety of information and tasks.

The government awarded a $600 million contract for the new system to the Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., in 2006. But the Census Bureau continued to tinker with the specifications, which the GAO said led to delays and cost overruns. The agency didn't complete the specifications until January.

Now the "rough estimate" for the revised contract could be as high as $2 billion, according to what Census officials have told Congress, the GAO said.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this week that the program has "serious problems." Both the Census Bureau and Harris "could have done things differently and better over the past couple of years," he said.

Harris spokesman Marc Raimondi said it was "not unusual for programs of this size and length to encounter some customer requests for additional requirements that they feel best enables them to accomplish their mission."

Census data are used to apportion congressional seats, as well as to calculate how much money states receive for subsidized school lunches, highway aid and a host of other federal programs dependent on income and other demographic data.