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Census Bureau goes forward with plans to ditch PDAs
While it doesn't exactly come as a surprise given recent developments, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has now told a House subcommittee that the Census Bureau will in fact be ditching its much-ballyhooed PDAs in favor of paper and pencil for the 2010 census. According to the AP, that fairly drastic move comes as part of a package of changes that will ultimately add as much as $3 billion to the cost of the census, bringing the total cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 billion. Among other things, Gutierrez said that a "lack of effective communication with one of our key contractors" was one of the factors that "significantly contributed to the challenges." The handhelds will apparently still see some use during the census, however, although only for verifying street addresses using the PDA's GPS functionality. For its part, Harris Corp. (which had the contract to provide the PDAs) put the best spin on things, saying that it was "encouraged that automation and the adoption of new technology is moving forward, even if in a more narrowly focused fashion." Of course, it's still getting its $600 million+, so it can't really complain all that much.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Problems with census PDAs could prompt a return to pencil and paper
Harris Corp. may have nothing but good things to say about the HTC-made PDAs it's planning to supply for use in the 2010 census, but it looks like the handhelds are already starting to cause plenty of headaches for census officials, who are reportedly even considering a return to pencil and paper if things can't be resolved. As the AP reports, the problems start with the contract for the devices, which originally clocked in at $596 million, has since grown to $647 million, and could eventually balloon to as much as $2 billion. As if that wasn't enough, the handheld has also apparently proven to be "too complex" for some of the temporary census workers that took part in a test last year, and the device was reportedly "not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary." As a result, census officials are now said to be considering a number of different options to scale back the use of the devices, only one of which apparently actually has the headcounters entering data into 'em as they go door-to-door.
