The most depressing, shameful thing I've read in a long time. Also strangely encouraging.
Can someone start a shit-storm on this please? $1.3 billion?!! ________________________________ From: sophia parafina <[email protected]> To: Ian White <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:05:30 PM Subject: Re: [Geowanking] 2010 census 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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