Posted on 05/01/2010 3:31:47 PM PDT by Texas Fossil
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A computer system that the Census Bureau needs to manage its door-to-door count of the U.S. population remained buggy and prone to crash a day before enumerators were set to begin their work, government officials said Friday.
The bureau's Paper Based Operations Control System did not function reliably in tests and, despite hardware and software upgrades, "may not be able to perform as needed under full operational loads," the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report.
"So far, it is not as stable as it needs to be," GAO Strategic Issues Director Robert Goldenkoff said before the start of a congressional hearing on the census.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
If they simply did what the constitution called for, and enumerated the population, I could tabulate it on an antique computer.
the census doesn’t ask if you are an illegal immigrant.
No, it does not. And it asks some really stupid things, like “do you have indoor plumbing?”
And why should they ask you ethnicity? We are United States Citizens. (And some of us are Texans, they don’t ask about that.)
Oh just disavow all findings by the census, give it to ACORN and let them decide what the outcome is and be done with it already!
I returned my census form and yet they’ve sent people to harass me four times since. Guess I didn’t vote the right way, huh?
I'm surprised they don't just supply a hyphen American and White and have us all fill in before the hyphen or choose white.
0bama people can’t even count???
They will try to blame the errors in the census on the computer system, when what will really drive the errors is intentional mis-count. Like “hanging chad” it will be their excuse to lie. And it is all Bush’s fault for not adopting the new hand held computers. Libs are never responsible for their own actions.
They talked about using statistical sampling to compensate for under counted groups. Advanced language justifying overcounting minorities.
Lockheed Martin built the system and they are notorious on Fed IT contracts for winning by underbidding, delivering a piece of junk, and then making the money up in fixes and support contracts.
Plus our government is full of secretaries turned sys admins who don’t know IT and have no real interest in it other than the grade 12-13 paycheck.
No, they cannot. But they can sure Lie!
We put men on the moon using slide rules. Surely the U.S. Census can be performed with an off the shelf computer.
IT is a strange field. Many of the old hands were self taught, but somehow got work done. Now you have very intelligent well educated “professionals” who have to have the latest hardware and software to do what was once simple.
Simple works, complexity is normally to hid the real reason for the results.
I love technology, built my first PC in 1982, and am not a IT professional. But I hold my own with the “Wonder Children”. Seriously I do have great respect for IT Pros. However many of them are pro Obozo, they know the technology, but cannot put things in perspective. Cannot see the forest for the trees.
Some people are both fast and accurate with an abicus.
A paper based system? What year is this? 1960?
No...its rigged.
I probably qualify as an “old hand” at this point.
Building a working OCR recognition system that can recognize 99%+ of handwritten forms has been done by lots of companies, and the IRS and many states have such systems installed. Modifying one to scan the census form and intake data from their little handheld PDA’s would be trivial compared to building one from scratch.
Typically the government hates highly automated and efficient systems because so many higher-ups have their kingdoms and jobs based on the old technology and the high head counts it requires.
Yes, I suspect it will be.
Yes, and the only solution to the economic mess we are in is to DownSize DC! Eliminate entire departments (Education, EPA, etc) Force Congress & Senate to telcommute most of the year. Have them live in their district under the thumb of the constituents, away from the lobbyists. This would change the center-of-gravity of government and seriously reduce cost. IT IS TIME!
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