Politico: 2010 Census - Higher cost, lower tech

[Tender Branson]

By DAVID ROGERS | 4/3/08 8:42 PM EST

Dreams of a high-tech census in 2010 are fading, adding billions to the public costs and exposing a not-so-loving triangle composed of the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress and a Republican-leaning communications firm in Florida.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday that the Census Bureau will have to dramatically scale back its ambitious plans to use hand-held computers to collect information from millions of Americans who don’t return census forms that come in the mail.

The Census Bureau still expects to use the computer devices and global positioning software to verify residential street addresses and make the mailings more efficient, but the follow-up interviews with hundreds of thousands of temporary workers will be done the old-fashioned paper way.

These changes — and other problems with the census — will add $2.2 billion to $3 billion to prior cost projections and bring the total to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion, Gutierrez said.

The first down payment will be an estimated $232 million for the current fiscal year, and the White House wants to cover these costs by taking money from chiefly Democratic-backed initiatives within the Department of Commerce budget.

In essence, Democrats are being asked to give up their priorities to help pay for cost overruns on a contract which the administration admits it made substantial errors in managing.

The cuts would have the most impact on the Economic Development Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a loan program benefiting the domestic steel industry.

“It seems more logical that the president should be proposing cuts to programs that he finds important to cover his administration’s blunders,” said Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who heads the Appropriations panel. “It is incomprehensible ... that this administration is willing to fund as an emergency the war in Iraq costing $370 million a day. But for less than a day in Iraq, the administration insists on an offset for the 2010 Census.”

Adding salt to the wound is the fact that the cost overruns and technical problems swirl around an outside government contractor, the Florida-based Harris Corp., with strong Republican political ties. Campaign data collected by opensecrets.org indicates that the corporation’s political action committee has had a heavy partisan tilt in the past, giving $734,000 to federal candidates in the 2000 to 2006 elections, almost all to Republicans.

Harris issued a statement saying it still looks forward to playing a large role in the 2010 count and it remains encouraged that “automation and the adoption of new technology is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion."

But Gutierrez acknowledged that the company’s “cost-plus” contract will be effectively doubled to about $1.3 billion even as its initial responsibilities are scaled back. And in questioning by panel members, the secretary conceded that the government had accepted early cost estimates from Harris that proved to be wildly wrong.

For example, an initial estimate for a “help desk” to assist census workers in the field with the computer devices was only $36 million. The revised number, after trials in the field, was about $217 million.

"It was a bad estimate. I can't think of a better way to say it," Gutierrez said. "Harris gave us the number. We accepted it. It was totally underestimated.”

Mollohan wasn’t alone in being upset with the government’s performance. New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, the ranking Republican on the panel, told Steven Murdock, the relatively new director at the Census Bureau: "You've inherited one hell of a mess."

Murdock sat quietly by as Gutierrez fielded most of the early questions.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9376.html

[Tender Branson]

2010 Census Miscount Fears Raised

(FRESNO, Calif.) — The Census Bureau has scaled back its dress rehearsal for the once-a-decade national head count, raising fears that thousands of soldiers, immigrants and other hard-to-reach people will go uncounted when the population survey is conducted in 2010.

"It's like sending up a rocket for a moon shot and not doing the final test on how to land," warned former Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt, who oversaw the agency during the 2000 count.

The dry run is now under way in two states, with more than a half-million households receiving questionnaires from the Census Bureau. But the agency dropped such routine follow-up practices as sending census takers door-to-door to check whether homes on the bureau's mailing list are vacant or occupied, and dispatching workers to figure out the best way to reach soldiers on military bases.

Because the dry run helps shape the way the national head count is ultimately carried out, some politicians and demographers worry that the census will miss members of the military, inmates, homeless people, college students, migrant workers and immigrants, both legal and illegal.

Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said he is confident the 2010 count will be accurate. He said that bureau officials haven't eliminated any crucial portions of the simulation and that the census itself will feature the usual in-person interviews.

"We would have liked to have some more operational testing, but it didn't work out that way," he said.

The paring back was a consequence of a decision the Census Bureau made two weeks ago: Because of technology glitches and a bungled government contract, the bureau scrapped plans to send census takers out with handheld computers. Buckner said there wasn't enough time to train census takers to go out with pencil and paper in the test run, so the agency simply dropped the door-to-part part.

Since 1980, the bureau has organized a dress rehearsal to work the bugs out of its data collection methods. The one taking place this month in San Joaquin County, Calif., and nine counties surrounding Fayetteville, N.C., promises to be the sparest yet.

Unlike in past years, workers won't be sent out to double-check whether homes are occupied, and won't be knocking on doors to encourage residents to send in their completed questionnaires. Nor will the government test out the best time and manner to deliver thousands of forms to people living in group quarters, such as college dorms, prisons or military bases.

The government uses census data to determine how many representatives each state should get in Congress and to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid.

"The cutbacks in the dress rehearsal will no doubt affect the accuracy of the 2010 Census," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. "The only question is how bad will it be and is there a chance to recover before 2010?"

The two areas hosting this year's rehearsal were selected because they contain a wide variety of people living in a multitude of circumstances. The Fayetteville area includes the Army's Fort Bragg. The Stockton, Calif., area some 60 miles east of San Francisco, residents speak dozens of languages at home. Stockton also has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation.

Prewitt — who serves as a government adviser on the census — said the data from practice runs is usually used to develop assumptions about housing vacancy rates and other conditions in the rest of the country. Without door-to-door visits, those extrapolations will be off, he said.

Also, without face-to-face contact, the bureau could have trouble understanding if its techniques are encouraging participation among immigrants, said William Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution.

"You've got an incredibly high amount of distrust of the government right now, and there are some significant obstacles that need to be overcome in this dress rehearsal," said state Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, a Southern California Democrat. "An undercount in California would mean a severe reduction in our fair share of federal dollars."

In 1990, about 838,000 Californians went uncounted, and the state lost out on $223 million in Medicaid and other federal programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Buckner emphasized that the bureau has other reliable ways to verify vacancy rates, and said concern about uncounted immigrants is unfounded. The agency is working with community organizations and using the first-ever Spanish-English form, with one side in English, the other in Spanish, he said. (Census forms have long been available entirely in Spanish.)

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1734886,00.html