What a Mess: How Census Bureau Botched IT Procurement The Census Bureau began moving in 2004 to develop handheld computers to collect data for the 2010 population count. This month the Bureau said the technology would not be ready in time. Door-to-door enumerators will fill out paper forms, as they have since 1790. According to officials in the Census Bureau, Congress, the Government Accountability Office and contractors, the automation project failed because Census could not provide a clear set of requirements to its contractor, Harris Corp. Harris’s president of civil programs, Cheryl Janey, said, “In other words, we have designed what the Census Bureau asked for, but what they have asked for may not be what they need.” Census contracted with Harris to produce about 500,000 handheld computers for $600 million. The cost estimate has more than doubled, to $1.3 billion, for just 150,000 units. At an April 9 hearing, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-CA, called the project “a colossal failure” that will cost taxpayers billions. GAO auditors testified that the failure was avoidable. Even before the RFP was issued, GAO warned that the Census Bureau was not sure exactly what it needed and faced challenges in managing the contract. Those warnings continued for more than three years. But the project was not rocket science. Harris’s Janey described the handhelds as “similar in design to the average off-the-shelf cell phone or Blackberry.” She said Census ordered “hundreds and hundreds” of changes in its requirements, including a new list of 400 in January, nearly two years into the contract. The new Census Bureau director, Steve Murdock, who inherited this mess when he took office in January, told the committee, “We did not effectively convey to the contractor the complexity of census operations, and the detailed requirements that needed to be fulfilled in order to complete the operations.” Janey’s testimony indicated there was push-back from some Census officials who did not trust automation. The committee’s ranking Republican, Tom Davis, R-VA, said Census officials were “in over their heads.” He added, “This was a failure of government management not contract performance.”