Your tax dollars at work:

Big worries for the nation’s first high-tech census should have been obvious when tests showed some of the door-to-door headcounters couldn’t figure out their fancy new handheld computers.

Now, officials say, technology problems could add as much as $2 billion to the cost of the 2010 census and jeopardize the accuracy of the nation’s most important survey.

Census officials are considering a return to using paper and pencil to count every man, woman and child in the nation.

At an initial cost of more than $11 billion, the 2010 census was already the most expensive ever. Officials now are scrambling to hold down costs while trying to ensure the count produces reliable population numbers — figures that will be used to apportion seats in Congress and divvy up more than $300 billion a year in federal and state funding.

Yeah, I know, two billion isn’t much for the federal government. But consider that the original contract for the technology upgrade was for less than half. Through sheer ignorance, a farmed-out part of something so routine (a census has been done since 1790) is multiplying its own cost. This pretty much happens with everything, folks…

This was to be the first truly high-tech count in the nation’s history, with census-takers using handheld computers to track and tally the millions of Americans who do not return the census forms mailed out by the government. The Census Bureau plans to hire and train nearly 600,000 temporary workers to help.

But interviews, congressional testimony and government reports describe an agency that was unprepared to manage a $600 million contract for the handheld computers that will be vital. Census officials are being blamed for a poor job spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary. […]

Census Director Steven Murdock acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that “communication problems” between census officials and Harris Corp. have resulted in “serious issues.” But, he added, “My pledge is that we are going to have a complete and accurate census.”

Murdock, the former state demographer of Texas, was just confirmed as census director in December. As an appointee of President Bush, he is not guaranteed to keep his job in the next administration, when the census will take place. (emphasis mine)

Gee, ya think?

Props.