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Buggy Census Software Not Ready for 2010

by Terrence O'Brien on May 3, 2010 at 04:05 PM

Census takers are preparing to kick off the door-to-door stage of the decennial counting of every American. Unfortunately, the software written to help manage that count may not be ready for prime time. The Paper Based Operations Control System has been the target of ire from the Government Accountability Office and other officials, who are complaining that the program is buggy and crash prone.

Originally, the 2010 Census was supposed to be conducted electronically by employees using handheld computers. That plan was scrapped after cost estimates began to rise, and the Census Bureau rushed a paper-based method into development that used a computer system to tabulate results and track progress. Unfortunately, this scaled-back system has not progressed as hoped, and any related cost savings evaporated. Census Director Robert Groves, who has himself raised concerns about the system's readiness, said the bureau has backup systems in place to deal with any glitches.

The push to count the roughly 48 million people who failed to return their Census surveys began this past weekend. Whether or not the final element of the once-a-decade project is completed in a timely matter rests largely in the hands of an untested application. [From: Huffington Post]

Tags: census, Census2010, GAO, government, GovernmentAccountabilityOffice, top, U.s.Census, U.s.Census2010, U.s.CensusBureau

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