A couple of things here: - This Census debacle is a well touted failure - both external and internal to the government. There isn't anything new here - just more awareness the absurd spending that can go on.
- An even larger problem here is how spending gets laid out. A census 10 years out isn't worth putting budget money behind. But when it starts looming there is a sort of panic, and then bad money is followed by worse money. And it's more "important" to go with a big name/vendor that will provide some safety that 'something' will happen. The short-sightedness based on politics, terms, and re-elections is somewhat antithesis to having a wise, long-seeing government - The new administration is *very* keen on fixing these problems. This is exactly what Vivek Kundra did in DC, where every day they had a "Trading room floor" where all the DC IT projects would get evaluated and assigned a "Buy/Sell/Hold" based on stakeholder happiness, schedule, deliverables, etc. For multi-million dollar contracts, every day was worth many thousands of dollars, so there should be something to show every day. If a project was marked "Sell", then you had a day or so before they called you in to defend your status. If they didn't like your progress, project cut or "hostile takeover". No sense throwing $4m more on a failing project. So now Vivek is Federal CIO and pushed to get the IT Spending dashboard up (http://it.usaspending.gov) - to make it very clear where money is going, where it's being wasted, and get citizens to (crowd-source?) help identify problems. Of course, that didn't prevent politics still sticking their head up around other recent "geo" oriented projects (yay lobbyists) but that's for another day. Andrew On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Mikel Maron<[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org > > -- Andrew Turner mobile: 248.982.3609 [email protected] http://highearthorbit.com http://geocommons.com Helping build the Geospatial Web Introduction to Neogeography - http://oreilly.com/catalog/neogeography _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
