Harris Census effort == FAIL

http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=660
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0509/052009mm.htm

Ethan Zuckerman's description of the device:

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2009/04/27/if-us-government-contractors-had-designed-the-iphone/

My understanding is that they are going to use paper maps, mark them up,
scan and georeference them back in, then heads-up digitize the changes. (
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/americas/03iht-3census.11652877.html
)

This is the part that irks me the most (from
http://fcw.com/Articles/2008/04/07/Census-counts-on-paper-for-2010.aspx?Page=1
)

"Despite the problems, Census awarded Harris two bonus fees under the
cost-plus contract. The company now stands to make $1.3 billion on the deal.
Gutierrez said that if Census officials had not decided to revert to paper
forms, Harris would have made $1.9 billion."

So yeah, Census, after giving Harris $1.3 billion, is implementing what
essentially amounts to http://walking-papers.org/

sophia

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Ian White <[email protected]> wrote:

>  Ok, I know this is an unnaturally practical topic, but I’ve been thinking
> about Census’ 2010 project relative to address verification/TIGER data. For
> those who don’t know, Harris Corp, Census’ long  time contractor for census,
> is going high tech—Sprint is OEMing gear to Harris to enable remote address
> verification and (I think) collection of other spatial data. There are a few
> GAO and other reports (eg, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06272.pdf and
> http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080409144834.pdf) that are critical
> of Harris’ approach/capabilities.
>
>
>
> Something I couldn’t resist: check out this HOT HOT HOT phone-type thing
> that will be used for geocoding in the field:
> http://www.harris.com/images/fdca.jpg. Apparently planning was begun in
> 2004 so there was no iPhone on the scene. What a drag as I’m sure the app
> could have been developed for less than the $600m contract (which is for the
> entire census, not the brick alone).
>
>
>
> Who has details about TIGER for 2010?
>
>
>
>
>
> Ian White ::  Urban Mapping Inc
>
> 690 Fifth Street  Suite 200 :: San Francisco  CA 94107
>
> T.415.946.8170 x800 :: F.866.385.8266 :: urbanmapping.com/blog
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Geowanking mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
>
>
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